The Table Gets Covered Because We Eat At It

You have a table you resent.

You would not use that word. If somebody asked, you would say it is the one place in the house that never stays clear, and you would say it lightly and move on.

But watch your own face next time you walk past it at half past four.

There is homework on it. There is a stack of post. There is a thing somebody is making, in pieces, that has been in pieces since Sunday. There is a bowl. There are two cups.

And here is what is interesting about every single one of those: they got there because somebody in this family used that table for something.

The homework is a child working. The post is life being handled. The pieces are somebody making something. The cups are two people who sat down.

That table is covered because it is the most used object in this house, and you have been reading the most used object in the house as the biggest failure in it.

Those two things cannot both be right, and I think you know which one is actually true.

They broke bread from house to house

There is a description in Acts of how the first believers actually lived, and it is full of tables.

And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart. (Acts 2:46, King James Version)

Breaking bread from house to house. Daily. In one another's homes, with gladness, which means ordinary rooms in ordinary houses full of people eating.

Nobody in that verse has a clear table. You cannot break bread daily with a crowd of people and have a surface that stays empty, and the text is not troubled by that in any way.

You are running the kind of table that verse describes, and a table in constant use has never once been a table in a state. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman looking at her own table at half past four, and Acts 2:46 puts daily bread and gladness in the same room.

And notice what the verse is actually praising.

Not the rooms. The gladness and the singleness of heart, in houses, at tables, with food on them. The surface is completely beside the point and the people are the entire subject.

You have been grading the surface in a scene where the people were always the subject, and the surface has never once been what was being looked at. The written word describes daily eating in ordinary houses without one word about the state of the furniture, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman who has quietly resented the best room in her house.

What the resentment is actually about

Let me say something careful here, because the resentment is real and it is not silly.

It is not about the table. It is about never getting a clear moment. A cleared table is a signal that says the day is done, and there has not been one of those in this house in a long time, and a person needs an end to a day.

That is a real need and you have been trying to meet it with a whole table, which is why it has never been met.

You have a real need for an ending and never a problem with a table, and the need has never once been unreasonable. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who has not had an end to a day in about four years, and Acts 2:46 pictures gladness in a house in constant use.

And here is why the whole table cannot deliver it.

The table is load bearing. It is the family's workshop and desk and post office and dining room, and it cannot be clear and still be those, and it is doing something more important than looking clear.

So the ending has to come from somewhere else, and it needs to be small enough to survive a family.

You are looking for an ending from a surface that cannot give one, and no working table has ever once been able to. The written word keeps the eating and the gladness together in a busy house, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has been asking one piece of furniture for two incompatible things.

One end of the table, twice

So here is tonight, and it is one end of the table and not the table.

Choose one small area. One end, big enough for two mugs, or a corner where a candle could sit. Clear only that, tonight.

Then do the same small area again tomorrow.

You are taking a small ending from a working table, and a small ending has never once been worth less than a large one. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman clearing one end of a table at nine in the evening, and Acts 2:46 has gladness in a house where the bread is broken daily.

Here is why this works when clearing the whole thing never has.

A small area can survive a family. Tomorrow the homework will be back in the middle and the post will be back in the pile, and your corner will very likely still be there, and if it is not you clear it again in ninety seconds.

That is an ending you can actually have every day of your life, and it has nothing to do with the state of the table.

You are able to have an ending every single evening, and it has never once had to cost the family their own table. The written word leaves the houses busy and puts the gladness in the middle of them, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman lighting a candle on a cleared corner.