One Table

You are to make a table of acacia wood; its length is to be 36 inches, its width 18 inches, and its height 27 inches…You are to set the Bread of the Presence on the table before me continually.

Exodus 25:23, 30

 

But the Levitical priests, the descendants of Zadok who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me, will approach me to minister to me; they will stand before me to offer me the fat and the blood, declares the Sovereign LORD. They will enter my sanctuary and approach my table to minister to me; they will keep my charge.

Exodus 44:15-16

 

“Get dressed for service and keep your lamps burning; be like people waiting for their master to come back from the wedding celebration, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. Blessed are those slaves whom their master finds alert when he returns! I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, have them take their place at the table, and will come and wait on them!

Luke 12:35-37

There is one table, and all are invited.

What mystery is this! Some mysteries of God’s love are so great words fall silent upon their knees before the One who is the Word.

Yet I will try to explain, to understand, at this humble keyboard.

Somehow, some love, Love Himself set a table and invited us.

We quibble over our tables. We create entire industries around how to decorate our tables. We make lists of dinner guests and labor over who is welcome, and who is not. Our pocketbooks limit how many we feed around our tables. We compete to have the best table.

Let us leave our tables behind. There is a better table! The Lord has set a table with unlimited provision, unbound joy, the absence of shame, and the cancellation of debt.

There was once a table in the wilderness, made of acacia wood, covered in gold, inside the tabernacle. Its intricate detail was designed by the Lord. Upon it lay the Bread of the Presence, a sacred emblem placed before the Lord, reminding all who would hunger that the Most High God is our sustenance, our life.

That Life, though He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross! As a result God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father (from Philippians 2:6-11).

Jesus will return. Get dressed for service and keep your lamps burning; be like people waiting for their master to come back from the wedding celebration, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. Blessed are those slaves whom their master finds alert when he returns! I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, have them take their place at the table, and will come and wait on them! (Luke 12:35-37)

What glorious mystery, poetic justice, poignant, heart-breaking beauty that He who laid a table in the wilderness of our lives will one day dress himself to serve us, servants that we are! Humility has abolished shame. Behold our God!

Let us not be found loitering at our man-made tables. There is one table, and all are invited.

Lord, may You find me alert when You return. Amen.

@audreycfrank

Photo by Nils Stahl on Unsplash