A Table, a Book, and a Seat for Jesus

The simple yet powerful beauty of having people over for dinner

Let me tell you about my dreams.

They are not grand dreams, these dreams don’t make money. There is no fame in them, nor is there always honour when shared. These are the simple dreams of a woman who longs to create a home.

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I’m sitting on the train going home after a long day of work. I am tired and the gentle sway and rock of the carriage battles against my need to stay awake. There is a child crying behind me, the woman in front of me is on the phone and my headphones do nothing to block out the din of commuters.

The afternoon sun is in my eyes.

I suppose it’s all part of human instinct — to daydream about greener pastures when the natural rhythms of life weigh down the shoulders. I suppose the lullaby rocking train has a hand in this, in why my thoughts turn towards my future and what I hope it will look like.

As the train weaves through the suburbs, my thoughts ponder the future and find their way to my table.

It’s a simple table but is in no way ordinary. It’s wooden and can open up to seat more people. I keep it long because the door is always open. Sometimes it’s decorated with cloth and candle, other times strewn with scrapbook paper and paints. There is always food. My table (like my home) is steadfastly present to host and hold those who need.

I pray that my table will be an intersection between heaven and earth, a thin place.

Four years ago I heard the Lord say that my table would be the meeting place for His glory (how He said this and the beauty therein is a blog post for another day). In that time of prayer I saw my future children set the table for dinner. When I asked them why they set an extra place, they said they “left a seat for Jesus”. My heart still swells when I ponder that sweet vision and I pray that the Lord, in His timing, would see it through safely earth-side.

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The Lord has continued speaking to me of the simplicity of the table — but also the power that it holds. Jesus‘ ministry happened quite often over a meal in a disciples’ home. However, Rosaria Butterfield’s book, The Gospel Comes with a House Key absolutely sealed my convictions about table ministry, or as she calls it, radically ordinary hospitality.

As a pastor’s wife, Rosaria has seen first hand the power having people over for dinner can have in a person’s life, she herself finding the truth of Christ over a meal (actually, two years worth of meals and dinners and conversations with her Christian neighbours). Here are a few beautiful things she says in her book.

“Radically ordinary hospitality is this: using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbours, and neighbours family of God. It brings glory to God, serves others, and lives out the gospel in word and deed…

“When our Christian homes are open, we make transparent to a watching world what Christ is doing with our bodies, our families, and our world. When we daily gather with family of God in organic and open and communal ways and invite those who do not yet know Christ to enter, we accompany one another in suffering. We bear one another’s burdens. We show a watching world what fervent prayer sounds like—talking to God, knowing that we are, through the merits of Christ, on good terms with him, and that our daily needs are his concern. When our Christian homes are open, our unsaved neighbours watch us struggle with our own sins—both the sins of our doing and the sin nature with which we wage daily combat…

“And we do it because the purpose of radically ordinary hospitality is to take the hand of a stranger and put it in the hand of the Saviour, to bridge hostile worlds, and to add to the family of God.”

— Rosaria Butterfield, The Gospel Comes with A House Key, pages 33-34
(emphasis mine)

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There are olive-green cloth napkins neatly folded and patiently waiting in my wardrobe. My Grandmothers’ crockery is sleeping in her glory-box in my parents living room. One day these treasures will grace the very table I’m dreaming of right now, as I sit on the train after a long day of work, the other city commuters my travelling neighbours.

I hope that one day, when I’m seated at that table with my husband and children (and hopefully a neighbour to two), that I would look at that place where my children have invited Jesus to dinner and thank Him for this holy moment.

Until then, may my heart now be softened towards my neighbour. May my arms be open to the broken hearted. May I, too, take the hand of the stranger and put it in the hand of the Saviour, and see the Kingdom come to earth (as it is in Heaven).

May this be our heart posture. Maranatha.

x Zara

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