I Have Never Eaten At My Own Table

There is a dining table in that house and you have never eaten at it.

Not once. Not in the six years since it came into the house. It is clear, it is polished, there is a thing in the middle of it, and every meal you have eaten in that house has been eaten somewhere else.

The counter. The couch. Standing up. In the car once or twice.

And the table is not being kept for a family that eats at it. There is nobody else in that house, or if there is, they eat where you do. It is being kept for an occasion.

I want to look at the occasion, because when it is described out loud it stops being credible.

The occasion involves other people. It involves a meal you would cook rather than assemble. It involves the table being laid, and something in a dish rather than in a pan, and everybody sitting down at once, and it is an evening that has never happened in that house and there is no version of the next six months in which it does.

So there is a large flat object in your house, in the best room, whose function is to wait.

Thou preparest a table before me

There is a line in the twenty third psalm about a table and the tense of it is the thing to notice.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. (Psalm 23:5, King James Version)

Thou preparest. Present tense. It is happening.

You are somebody God is described as setting a table for, and a table has never once been prepared in order to stand ready. Psalm 23:5 has the table being prepared in the present tense and set before somebody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man standing in a dining room.

Now look at the circumstances in that verse, because they are not the ones anybody would choose.

In the presence of mine enemies. That is where the table is being set. Not in peacetime, not on an occasion, not once everything has settled down.

The table in that psalm is set in the middle of trouble, and it is set anyway, and the whole point of the image is that a meal happens in conditions nobody would have described as suitable.

You have a table set in conditions nobody would call suitable, and an occasion has never once been the setting Scripture picked for a meal. The Spirit of God is the one who prepares a table in the middle of things rather than after them, and it is written in Psalm 23:5 that it happens in the presence of enemies.

What a table is actually for

Now the practical part, and this is where I want to be direct.

A table is not a surface. It is a posture.

Eating at a table puts a person in a specific position. Sitting down, upright, facing forward, with both hands free, with the food in front of them rather than in their lap or their hand. And that position does something to a meal, and the thing it does is the reason human beings built tables in the first place.

Eating standing at a counter is a different physical act. It is faster, it is one handed, and it is closer to refuelling than to eating.

You have not eaten a meal in six years. You have absorbed about six thousand of them.

You are able to sit down to eat, and a meal taken standing up has never once been the same act as a meal. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present at a table, and Psalm 23:5 has a table prepared and set before somebody in the present tense.

And here is the other half, and it is the reason this matters more when a man is on his own.

A man who eats standing up alone is eating in a way that says the meal is not an event.

And a meal is one of about three things in a day that can be. It has a beginning and an end, it happens in one place, and it stops when it is finished. Almost nothing else in a day has that shape.

Six years of counters is six years of a day with nothing in it that had a shape, and that is a cost that does not show up anywhere and is paid every evening.

You are able to give a day one thing that has a shape, and a meal at a table has never once been an indulgence in the house of the man who owns the table. The Spirit of God is the one who prepares a table in the middle of a life rather than at the end of one, and it is written in Psalm 23:5 that the cup runs over at a table set in trouble.

And this, plainly, in these words. That table is not a report on you. Not on your household, not on whether anybody comes over, not on the life you have. A polished table nobody has eaten at is not a verdict on the man who owns it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a dining room, and an unused table has never once been a statement about who lives in the house. Psalm 23:5 sets the table in the middle of trouble in Psalm 23, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One meal, and the plate left

So here is the assignment, and it is one meal and one hour.

Eat one meal at that table this week, and leave the plate on it for an hour afterward.

One meal. Whatever the meal actually is. Something out of a pan, something out of a package, whatever Tuesday is in that house. Do not cook something for the table, because cooking something for the table is the occasion arriving in a smaller costume and it will not happen.

Take the plate to the table. Move the thing in the middle if it is in the way. Sit down properly, facing forward, and eat it.

You are able to sit down at your own table with an ordinary meal, and a plate carried in from a pan has never once been beneath the table it was set on. The Holy Spirit is the one at a table with a man eating something out of a pan, and Psalm 23:5 has a table prepared and set in conditions nobody would have chosen.

Then the second half, which is the part that does the work.

Leave the plate on the table for an hour afterward.

Not overnight, unless you want to. An hour. Because the instinct at the end of a meal is to clear the surface and restore it, and restoring it is what has kept it a surface for six years.

A plate on a table for an hour is a table that has been eaten at. And a table that has been eaten at once is a table, and it will be easier the second time and the fourth time and by the tenth time it will be where you eat and nothing more.

You are turning a surface back into a table with one plate and one hour, and a table that has been used once has never once gone back to being furniture. The Spirit of God is the one present at a table in an ordinary week, and it is written in Psalm 23:5 that the preparing is happening now rather than later.