The banquet meal is ready to be served: lamb roasted, wine poured out, table set with silver and flowers. Prov 9:2 (TPT)

The Table Series – Part 1

Go to PART 1  |  PART 2  |  PART 3  |  PART 4  |  PART 5  |  PART 6  |  PART 7

I love second-hand tables. A few years ago, I bought an old table from a lady, and when I went to pick it up, she looked at me and said: “This table has thirty years of our lives soaked into it. We’ve cried, laughed, fought, talked, made decisions, and eaten around it. Now, it’s your turn.” We took that table home, and every day I sat at it, looking at the grooves in the wood, the marks embedded into the polish, the chips around the edges, and endeavoured to pour more life and stories into and around it.

A few years ago, Jesse and I accidentally started a habit around this table. On Sunday nights, after kissing our kid's goodnight, we found ourselves sitting at the table, a glass of wine in hand, talking. We talk about everything. Faith and the Bible and theology to science and psychology and politics. We talk about our kids, our home, our dreams and our fears. Life… all of it. Nothing is “off the table.”

Sometimes our chats are fiery and end with slammed doors (and woken children…). And other times, we talk for hours about the world and faith and people and war and peace and the government. Some conversations end with more questions than what we began with and some of them, well, haven’t ended. They’re ongoing as we try as best we can to live in this crazy, messed up, beautiful world.

Tables.

What happens around yours?

Food, family, friends, bandaids on kids, mending holes in clothes, writing applications, endless hours on the internet, reading school reports, cups of tea, pots of coffee, puzzles and games, silence and rest… our tables see more life than we realize.

Pocketfuel is our “digital table,” so to speak. It’s an open invitation to one and all to pull up a chair, take a seat and join the conversation; share bread and wine, share hearts and stories.

Tables have the potential to break down walls, open hearts, and mend bridges. They nourish and give, but they also need and receive. I would wager a guess that most wars we’ve seen throughout our ragged history started around tables. But I know redemption starts there, too. Healing. Mending. Peace.

In her book “Bread and Wine” Shauna Niequest said: “If the home is a body, the table is the heart, the beating center, the sustainer of life and health.”

Proverbs 9:1-2 says:

“Lady Wisdom has built and furnished her home; it’s supported by seven hewn timbers. The banquet meal is ready to be served: lamb roasted, wine poured out, table set with silver and flowers.”

Sometimes wisdom isn't found in governments, intelligence, science labs, and even religious institutions, but in more simple and intimate places, the everyday and ordinary, around humble tables set to give and receive.

Go to Part 2 – Breaking Bread »

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