God Made Us for Community with Others...So, No Surprises Here

From the Harvard Business Review Daily Stat:

October 17, 2014

Why Does Food Taste Better if Someone Else Is Having the Same Thing?

People who ate chocolate in the presence of another person thought it tasted better if the other person had eaten the same thing, rating it 6.83 on an 11-point flavor scale versus 5.57 if the other person had been merely reading a booklet. This is even though there was no conversation about the experience, says a team at Yale led by Erica J. Boothby. Imagining another person’s feelings during a shared event may increase the cognitive resources you devote to it, thus intensifying your experience, the researchers say.

SOURCE: Shared Experiences Are Amplified

Eating with others can be one of the most intimate of all human experiences.

This is why eating with someone for whom you have lunch or strong bonds of friendship is so gratifying joyous.

It also explains part of what happens in the Holy Communion for Christians.

First, Christ gives His body and blood to us and we all get to experience this amazing gift.

In Communion, Christ gives His life to us in act of supreme love and grace that imparts forgiveness of sins.

This meal also draws us to together with an amazing fellowship of Christ's Church.

In Communion, eternity invades our time-bound world, allowing repentant believers a joyous meal with believers of every time and every place, including the saints who have gone before us who now live in eternity.

At the moment Christians receive the body and blood, the eternal now of God comes to us and, at that moment, we joyously fellowship and humbly receive the blessings of God's grace in Christ as we experience an earthly foretaste of the heavenly banquet.