Come To The Table

Shauna  Niequist is one of the writers for “Today’s Christian Woman.” She has written an above titled article which emphasizes the importance of gathering around the table and eating with our family. In her article, Shauna encourages us to slow down the frantic pace that many of us are in, drawing closer together as a family as we gather around the dinner table, not only to share our food, and the day’s events, but to share what‘s on our heart with each other:

“I want you to stop running from thing to thing to thing, and to sit down at the table, to offer the people you love something humble and nourishing, like soup and bread, like a story, like a hand holding another hand while you pray. We live in a world that values us for how fast we go, for how much we accomplish, for how much life we can pack into one day. But I’m coming to believe it’s in the in-between spaces that our lives change, and that the real beauty lies there.

Most of the time, I eat like someone’s about to steal my plate, like I can’t be bothered to chew or taste or feel, but I’m coming to see that the table is about food, and it’s also about time. It’s about showing up in person, a whole and present person, instead of a fragmented, frantic person, phone in one hand and to-do list in the other. Put them down, both of them, twin symbols of the modern age, and pick up a knife and a fork.

The table is where time stops. It’s where we look people in the eye, where we tell the truth about how hard it is, where we make space to listen to the whole story, not the textable sound bite.

I want you to invest yourself wholly and deeply in friendship, God’s greatest evidence of himself here on earth. More than anything, I want you to come to the table. In all sorts of ways, both literally and metaphorically, come to the table. We don’t come to the table to fight or to defend. We don’t come to prove or to conquer, to draw lines in the sand or to stir up trouble. We come to the table because our hunger brings us there. We come with a need, with fragility, with an admission of our humanity.

The table is the great equalizer, the level playing field many of us have been looking everywhere for. The table is the place where the doing stops, the trying stops, the masks are removed, and we allow ourselves to be nourished, like children. We allow someone else to meet our need. In a world that prides people on not having needs, on going longer and faster, on going without, on powering through, the table is a place of safety and rest and humanity, where we are allowed to be as fragile as we feel. If the home is a body, the table is the heart, the beating center, the sustainer of life and health.”

Dear reader, let us seriously think about what Shauna has pointed out in her above thoughts about the importance of eating together as a family without any worldly distractions. Lord, please help us as families, to draw closer to one another and closer to You, in Jesus’ name.

—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets

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