Everybody Takes A Plate Away

You laid it and nobody came.

Not dramatically. Nobody refused. You put four plates out on a Tuesday because you had made something proper, and then one person took theirs upstairs because of the thing they were in the middle of, and one took theirs to the front room, and one ate standing at the counter with their coat half off.

And you stood there with a laid table and a plate in your hand.

And you did not say anything, because saying something would have made it into an issue on an evening when nobody had done anything wrong.

So you ate at the counter too.

That table is used for other things now. It has a bag on it most days and somebody's charger and the pile that lives at the far end. You wipe it and things come back onto it within a day.

And you cook every night. That is the part that turns in you. You cook a proper meal most days of the week for people who take it away in four directions, and it is not that they do not appreciate it, and it is not a family that is coming apart. It is that the sitting down stopped, the way things stop, without anybody deciding.

This is the last article on this site, and I want to say the two things that matter before anything else.

The first is that this is not about them. There is nothing in here for you to say to your household, no conversation to have, no rule to introduce at dinner.

And the second is the one that makes it possible: whoever is there is enough.

That is not a lowered target. It is the actual instruction. If it is you and one of them, that is a meal at a table. If it is you and nobody, that is a meal at a table.

Thou preparest a table before me

There is a line in the twenty third psalm about a table, and where it is set is the point.

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 a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.

Look at the setting. Not a safe room. Not a quiet house at the end of a good week. A table laid in a place where things are hostile, with people who mean him harm in view.

And it is prepared anyway.

That is a strange picture and it is meant to be. The natural response to being surrounded is to eat quickly, standing, or not at all. What is described instead is the deliberate work of laying a table: setting it out, taking the time, making an occasion in the middle of exactly the wrong conditions.

And notice who does it. Thou preparest. This is God laying a table in circumstances nobody would call suitable.

Now hold that against a Tuesday in your kitchen.

You have been waiting for the conditions. Not consciously, but the shape of your evenings assumes it: a table is for when everybody is available, and nobody is available, so the table is for other things now.

The psalm does not wait for conditions. It lays the table in the worst ones available and calls that the provision.

And the third line is worth having too. My cup runneth over. That is not a description of quantity so much as of manner. It is poured generously, past the sensible line, by somebody who is not being careful about it.

That is how the table gets laid in this psalm: fully, in a bad spot, for one person.

The table gets prepared in the wrong conditions in that psalm and never once waits for the right ones, and it has never once required the room to be suitable. Psalm 23:5 says thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody standing beside a laid table with a plate in her hand.

The laying is the thing

Here is the practical half, and it is a change in what you are aiming at.

The table is not a container for the family. It is an offer, and an offer stands whether or not it is taken.

That is the shift. At the moment you lay it in order to produce an outcome, which is everybody sitting down. And so when they do not, the laying was a failure, and after a few of those you stop laying it, and the whole thing quietly ends.

But laying a table is a complete act. It says something on its own: there is a place here, food is ready, this is a room where people eat together. It says that to everyone who walks past it, including the one who takes their plate upstairs, and it says it again the next night.

And what it says is received even when it is declined. Your son knows there is a laid table in that kitchen. He knows it every time he passes it with a plate. That is not nothing, and it is not the same as a house where nobody has laid one for a year.

And here is the second thing, which is the part you have been carrying.

You have been eating at the counter.

That is the detail in your Tuesday that I would go back to. Everybody else went to a room they had chosen. You stayed in the kitchen and ate standing up in front of a table you had laid, because sitting at it alone felt like something you did not want to feel.

But sitting at that table is not a demonstration of being left out. It is a woman eating a meal at a table in her own house, which is what she wanted the evening to be, and the fact that she is doing it on her own does not convert it into a sad thing.

You are somebody. Whoever is there includes you.

The laying is a complete act and an offer stands whether or not it is taken, and eating alone at your own table has never once been the same as being left out. The written word lays a table for one person in the presence of enemies, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody eating standing up in front of something she prepared.

Lay it tonight and sit down with whoever is there

So here is the last assignment on this site.

Lay the table tonight and eat one meal at it with whoever is in the house.

Lay it properly. Clear the end that has the pile on it. Plates on the table, something to drink in the middle, the whole thing set out.

And say nothing. Do not announce that we are eating at the table tonight, and do not call anybody. Put the food out and start eating.

And here is the whole of it: eat at that table with whoever comes, including nobody.

If two of them sit down, that is the meal. If one wanders over halfway through with a plate they had taken elsewhere, that is the meal. If nobody does, you sit at that table and eat your dinner properly, and that is also the meal, and it is not a disappointment.

Do not comment on who is there. Not gratitude to the ones who came, which makes them a solution to a problem, and nothing at all to the ones who did not.

And here is what tends to happen, and I offer it as a description rather than a promise. A laid table with somebody sitting at it is a stronger invitation than any request. The person who took their plate to the front room can hear you in there. Some evening, not necessarily this one, somebody comes back through and sits down, because a table with a person at it is the most natural thing in a house to join.

And that is the last word from this site: the laying is worth doing before anybody comes, in the conditions you actually have, on a Tuesday, with the pile still at the far end. Because a table laid in a house is a real thing, and so is a woman sitting down to eat at it.

You are able to lay it and sit at it with whoever is there, and the laying has never once needed an outcome to have been worth doing. Psalm 23:5 prepares a table in the presence of enemies and pours the cup over, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody sitting down at a table she set herself.