As we all face yet another world crisis and are tempted to despair, how important it is that we lead our home, our conversations, our relationships in the direction of holding fast to the goodness of God, to cultivate close community in order to provide a sense of stability and hope. We are the conductors of the reality of God’s true attributes as we gather around our family table with intentionality. Countless surveys show that families who eat together provide emotional stability and a sense of well being. Gather together in peace and love today.
Reclaiming the Family Table
The story of the Clarkson family has been written at tables. Not with pen and paper, but with words and people, food and fellowship, talk and time. Whatever kind of table it might be—breakfast, lunch, dinner; picnic or deck; plain or fancy; small, tall, wood, metal, or rock; bare or cloth-covered; even the ground—it becomes our family table when we sit down together to eat and drink and be and belong. The delightful fruits of God’s creation we share together fill and fuel us as God’s life- breathed and image-bearing creatures, and our shared story grows from the table’s Spirit-infused life coming alive in us.
I believe that’s true for all of us.
When we sit at our tables, we’re not just an aggregate of individual family members eating and drinking to stay alive; we’re a congregation of communing souls hungering and thirsting to experience the goodness and beauty of the life God has designed just for us. Even the simplest supper, meal, snack, or teatime can become, in some way, a feast—a lavish celebration of the living God’s life and goodness. It’s not just about the physical act of eating, but about sharing and enjoying life as God designed and gave it to us. That is the essence of the lifegiving table.Now you may be thinking, That doesn’t sound like any table where my family sits. We’re doing well just to get four kids sitting in chairs, with cereal and milk in bowls, all at the same time. Most of the “life” at our breakfast table comes from a family-size cereal box. Maybe you see yourself among the growing number of families who eat fewer meals together at home, spend less time at the table when they do, and consume less real food made at home and more manufactured or take-out food made somewhere else by some unknown makers.
The unfortunate reality of modern American culture is that it has robbed too many homes of the once central role of the table in family life and has stolen the goodness of eating real, home cooked foods. When asked, most parents will respond that of course it’s important for families to eat regular meals together. At the same time, many will sheepishly admit that they don’t. If there is life to be found at the table today, it is life that must be intentionally rescued and reclaimed from its cultural exile.
