Re-Envisioning The Dinner Table
Photo by Madison Lock
It's been a little over two months since I began blogging again, and I'm finding a lot of joy in processing life through written word. In sharing some of the littles truths I'm discovering in my own journey, I've been encouraged and affirmed by your own comments and stories. I've recently spent some time, with the help of my brother, creating this little website! I hope that by sharing my thoughts here in the space, we can discover together new ways in which the greatness of God's grace companions alongside what we perceive to be our "ordinary" human experiences.
Speaking of ordinary spaces, I recently found myself asking God if his grace really is present in all that happens at my dinner table. For those of you with little ones, you can commiserate when I say that sometimes my table turns into a battleground between one tired momma who has slaved over a meal and little ones who refuse to eat. It was after one of these difficult dinner times that I began thinking about the prophetic nature of the table and wrote the following reflection. I am thankful to the team at JellyTelly for recently featuring it on their website.
Excerpt:
In my dad’s song More to this Life, he sings, “Today I watched in silence as people passed me by, and I strained to see if there was something hidden in their eyes; but they all looked back at me as if to say, ‘Life just goes on.’” We all want to believe in a deeper meaning to life, and throughout our day, we experience spaces and places in time - prophetic signs of sorts - reminding us that we are a part of something much more cosmic than our little here and now.
It led me to wonder, what if we began envisioning our dining room table as one of these places? Some of you are rolling your eyes right now; “Oh yeah, my table prophesies alright. It tells me that I might go crazy tonight when my kids complain about the meal I’ve worked tirelessly to prepare.” For others of you, all you see in looking at your table are the empty chairs – painful reminders of loved ones lost. Life is moving at a fast pace, and for many of us the table is all-too-often reduced to being a messy nuisance – a place we must stop for a quick bite to eat before the next important meeting or appointment on the calendar.
While all the aforementioned scenarios have certainly unfolded at our table, I also find a subversive power in a table’s ability to make us all pause for a moment, affording us the space in time to be present with one another.
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