The Everyday Banquet is a 52-week family discipleship devotional for those who desire to establish a family culture of prayer, faith discussions, and worship together.
Introducing
The Everyday Banquet
The Everyday Banquet invites families to interrupt their daily busyness and return to the table of discipleship. Together, families will prepare meals, engage in discussion, read God’s Word, and worship. While practicing these rhythms, families will be given the tools to naturally discuss God together as they cultivate the ancient practice of a “sabbath meal” around the table.
The Details
The Everyday Banquet
Topic: Family Discipleship
Length of Study: 52 Weeks
Focal Scripture: Multiple Passages
This devotional is for you if...
The Book Structure
Structure: 52 weekly entries divided into 4 seasons with 4 recipes and 4 hymns per season.
Elements: The Everyday Banquet offers families four sections, each dedicated to a season of the year: Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer. In each section, you’ll find four recipes that invite the entire family to enjoy preparing meals together, four hymns that provide an opportunity for family worship, and thirteen devotionals that foster meaningful discussions about the Lord, promoting both sharing and listening. Each week will guide the parents to read the Bible to their family and then answer questions together.
Tangible ways to pursue dicscipleship as a family
Each seasonal section includes 4 hymns, 4 recipes, and 13 devotionals designed to bring unity to your family.
A seasonal structure
The Everyday Banquet offers families four sections, each dedicated to a seasons of the year: Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer.
Hymns
Each season includes 4 hymns which serve as an opportunity for families to join in worship together.
Recipes
The Everyday Banquet includes 4 recipes per season meant to invite the entire family to enjoy preparing meals together.
Devotionals
There are 13 devotionals per season, intentionally written to foster meaningful discussions about the Lord as a family.
The Everyday Banquet Author
SarahRuth Owens
SarahRuth Owens is a mother of three boys. She has seen the breakdown in healthy families firsthand through her work as a foster parent, child advocate, and teacher. One of her top priorities is to inspire parents to cultivate life-giving homes that will give children the foundation in God’s Word that is essential for a Christ-centered future.
SarahRuth Owens is hopeful that readers will find rhythms of family connection and unity and faith-filled conversation amidst the business of life.
FROM THE INTRODUCTION
“Every day we step outside our homes and face the world. Parents and children alike are bombarded with cultural norms, work expectations, and the demands of peers and teachers. As we return home, it is easy to continue on separately, to decompress in front of a device, or read a book alone. However, the family was designed by God to establish his kingdom on earth. While not the only way to establish his kingdom on earth, we are created to model his love, kindness, and generosity first toward those in our homes. It is our daily opportunity to practice kingdom principles and be the hands and feet of Jesus to those around us. When we sit at our dining room tables and engage with one another intentionally, we have a kingdom opportunity to impart his truth in a unique way.
So, may it start today. Grab your oven mitt and your favorite Bible, tell your children to meet you in the kitchen, and come to the table for an everyday banquet.”
- SarahRuth Owens, The Everyday Banquet
Frequently Asked Questions
In the hustle and bustle of early motherhood, I found mealtimes to be chaotic and stressful. Three little boys demanding, reaching, standing, and wanting to eat and run were not a recipe for peaceful, meaningful moments. However, deep in my heart, I had a vision of how mealtimes could become an anchor for the soul.
You see, as a young girl, I gathered around my grandmother's Sabbath table each Friday evening. I stood in holy reverence as she covered her eyes and lit our Sabbath candles. I will never forget the smells, the gentle candlelight, and the great love I knew at her table. As I watched the chaos ensue at my own dining room table, I knew there had to be a way to invite my sons into the ancient path of my Jewish upbringing—the path that developed a strong faith in my young heart.
So I pivoted. Instead of expecting fast and furious meal times, I played gentle worship music in the background and talked to my boys about our faith during meals. Sometimes we lit candles, other times we had teapots and special treats available to help them linger. Whatever I served (sometimes it was chicken nuggets and french fries from Chik-fil-A), I came to the table with purpose and intention: to share my faith and God's love with them. With a Bible in hand and a Spotify worship playlist cued up, I invited my sons to discourse about God and learn to worship him in our home during each meal. My pivot changed the atmosphere at our family table, and yours can too!
The Everyday Banquet is designed to guide you and your family as you journey through the seasons and holidays of one calendar year together. It is organized in such a way that you can learn from my own mistakes and get the package deal—a thoughtfully-organized, faith-filled devotional for your family to enjoy as you come to the table.
So, don’t! Commit to trying it out. This devotional is written in short, easy to digest pieces that a mother or father can use as an open and go guide, or choose to dig in deep and really digest. Each week can stand alone and it is not dependent upon the week before. Family discipleship is a one-foot-in-front-of-another kind of thing—just like your own faith walk.
The Everyday Banquet is divided into seasons. This allows for an easy entry at any time, where a family can start at any point in the devotional or even start and stop and then begin again. Every season also includes four original recipes and four hymns to use during family worship time. Each week includes the same components: Preparation, In the Kitchen, Dining, Devotion & Reflection for one meaningful time at your dinner table. The idea is that your family will choose one meal and dedicate it to being present and together, focused on God and his Word.
Just pick up the next week! It really is that easy. We wanted to create a resource for real families doing real life. Dance lessons, visits from grandparents, sickness, etc. happen. You will miss a week. Then you will feel better or have more time, and you can dive in again.
The weeks are not connected so you can absolutely jump around if you would like. However, some weeks line up with specific holidays in a calendar year so be sure to align that week with when the holiday is occurring.
Great question! This is not a cookbook. The recipes are an extra way to cultivate family togetherness if you’d like to use them. You can absolutely grab take-out or bake frozen lasagna and use this devotional.
YouTube and Spotify are a wonderful way to incorporate the hymns from this devotional. Our family enjoys finding the hymns via the Happy Hymnody website whenever possible at HappyHymnody.com.
This devotional includes a variety of verses from many books of the Bible. Instead of being a focused study of one book of the Bible, this devotional follows seasonal rhythms and directs families to have conversations about liturgical holidays, Jewish feasts, and basic faith tenets.
This devotional can be left open to be used on-the-go. If used in this manner, it is very little work. You can keep it on your dining room table and open it up at one meal time each week. That said, we have added special recipes, simple but meaningful multisensory activities, and more for those that would like to dive deeper into the rhythms. If you decide to do each week with the preparation suggested, you may spend about 15-30 minutes outside of your meal and cooking time, preparing for your everyday banquet.
This devotional was written with families in mind. Children ages 5 to teens will find ways to participate each week.
This devotional is written so that families can jump in at any time.
SarahRuth Owens was born to a Jewish family. She was raised Jewish until age 10. She is currently a Messianic Jew. This means she continues to practice Judaism with the understanding that Jesus came and fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies about a coming Messiah. She has accepted him as the ultimate atoning sacrifice for her own sins and the sins of all humanity. This devotional includes weeks where families are guided through feasts described in the Old Testament. These feasts were given first to the Jewish people, but the entire counsel of God’s Word is good for the instruction of God’s children. In The Everyday Banquet, Christian families are invited to learn about these feasts and their powerful meaning for those that are disciples of Jesus.
The Everyday Banquet was written for Christian families. This means that every devotional within the book that includes Jewish holidays and traditions is approached from a Christian perspective. The heart behind this is to connect the beautiful and valuable traditions of Judaism with the Gospel!
This devotional is best suited for families. Any kind of family can benefit from this devotional—single mothers, grandparents raising grandchildren, single fathers, adoptive families, step-families, etc.
