The best meal I ever ate was when I was eleven or twelve.

I didn’t even sit at the table. I sat on the floor, on the beige carpet of a middle-class home in Lincoln, Nebraska. My family had been invited to supper by a family who went to our church, by the almost worn-out custom of having the pastor over for dinner. I was a kid, sitting on the floor, eating off the coffee table.

There was nothing special about the home or the house, the neighborhood or the city. We weren’t celebrating an occasion or a holiday. It was just dinner, their family of three, our family of six. Nine people, from toddler to mid-forties. Midwestern people on an ordinary night, probably a Friday, during a time of year that I can’t remember.

It was one of the only meals I have experienced where every speck of food on the table was eaten, from the meat platter to the salad bowl. Every leaf, every crumb, every shred. Prime rib that I can still taste, marinated and grilled and cut in thin slices. Baked potatoes, starchy and buttery. And a Caesar salad with tangy dressing and homemade croutons, served up in an acacia wood bowl. Dinner rolls. I think there were dinner rolls.

But beyond the food was the laughter. I wish I could remember just one story, just one anecdote, but I can’t. I just remember the laughter. From one story to the next, we laughed until we cried. I’m surprised no one choked on their prime rib.

I don’t know now if I found so much humor in the stories that the adults told or if I simply found their laughter contagious: my mother’s head tilted to the side, my father’s shoulders heaving in silent, breathless bursts, glasses removed to wipe his eyes again and again.

That meal is the reason I love having people around my table. That meal is the reason I have always wanted an acacia wood salad bowl. It’s the reason I love simple meals with friends on ordinary Friday nights in the middle of the school year. Because I love people. I love hearing their stories. I love good food and a glass of wine. So simple, but marvelous again and again, the magic that happens around a dinner table.

The older I get and the more years I see fly off the calendar, I realize that there are a few really good things in life. And no matter who you are or how much you have or don’t have, everyone has access to these really good things. I used to think that celebrities and rich people, beautiful people and the insanely accomplished had the edge with their praise and access to all the things money can buy. But I really can’t imagine a meal they have had that I haven’t had: one with good food and good friends. One where we sit around a table or on the floor, with stories and laughter, like humans have done together for thousands of years. Coming together to feed each other.

I think this is why God describes heaven like a big banquet. It’s something we understand. And that’s what heaven’s about: being together with each other, being with God. I wonder what kind of stories we’ll share, how much we’ll laugh, how happy we’ll be. In the meantime, we can practice here on earth.