– Secret Place Insights –
Dear One, framed and hanging in my kitchen is a picture of a dinner table beautifully set for company. The photo is the cover of a greeting card from a longtime friend. The cover reads:
“The Best Memories are Made while Gathered Around the Table.”
I so agreed with the phrase that I framed it, and hung it in the kitchen.
Now, after months of life being far from normal due to covid and surgery, I find that one of the things I have missed the most has been visiting with family and friends around our table. And so we have begun gathering, but are limited for I am still, STILL, recovering, but we have recently enjoyed food and fellowship on the front porch, the back patio, and in the dining room. The last such meal was Sunday dinner – a harvest meal of fresh fruit punch, a meaty salad with lots of garden tomatoes, just picked corn on the cob, and our first peach pie of the season. Following the meal, in the heat of the day, Hearts and Scottish Bridge were played in the shade of towering trees. To the teenagers’ delight, they beat the adults. For this grandma, that was perfect.
But what is it about a meal and unrushed conversation that so fully feeds both body and soul? For me, it has always been a bit of a mystery. Both my grandmother and my mother spent a lifetime welcoming people to their tables. Did they have an answer to what remains a mystery to me? Or, were they like me, knowing that it was wonderful fellowship, but not understanding why? There are so many ways to share life with others, and yet, the simple breaking of bread seems to be the place that the best of memories are made. Is it the care which goes into preparing the food? Is it the opportunity for unlimited, free flowing conversation? Or, is it something else?
I think perhaps, it is something else. Recently, one of my granddaughters invited me to go out to lunch with just her. We did so this past week. The restaurant of her choice was lovely, the food excellent, and the conversation heartwarming and memorable. I left in awe of our time together.
Could it be, could it be, that the answer to the mystery is found in what we read in Matthew 18:20? “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” I guess since a Christian’s underlying intent is to share the love of God in all things, it is. So it must be the Presence of the Holy Spirit that so richly blesses such gatherings. Surprise, surprise, I think I have answered my own question. Or, was it revealed?
“But if we walk in the light as He is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another…” 1 John 1:5-7
Blessings,
Susanne
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