Gathering at the Table

I’m the kind of person that reads a cookbook cover to cover. I don’t know if that’s actually a “kind of person,” but if it is, I am that (and so is my mom)! I love to sit down with a new cookbook and read the recipes, look at the pictures, think of the person or people for whom I might make a particular dish. Particularly in times like these when there are no dinner guests or covered dishes to try these new recipes out on, it’s fun to dream about a time when I will again be able to share food and stories and fellowship with others.

After talking to my sister-in-law on the phone one day this past week and finding out that Joanna Gaines of HGTV fame had come out with a Vol. 2 of her cookbook that I love oh so much, I immediately got online and ordered it. It came two days later, and I sat and read it from cover to cover. Granted, this happened in fits and starts because…life with a two-year-old; but I managed to read the whole thing in one day and even couldn’t resist trying out her recipe for oatmeal cream pies.

Often when celebrities publish a cookbook they will have a long, fluffy introduction about why they wanted to create a cookbook and what they hope it will be for you. Some are good, some are less so; but I read them all. Joanna Gaines’ was good. It was really good. 

So good, in fact, that it inspired a blog post. In her introduction, she says this:

“…food is my family’s love language…and I’ve grown to realize that this is likely true for all of us. Food is the musical soundtrack of our lives; it bolsters our traditions; it maintains our fondest memories and our notion of home and family and, in the most basic sense, our ability to live and breathe day in and day out. It is around food that we gather in joy and in grief; it is an offering that comforts us in bad times and enriches the good times. No other thing in the living world nourishes us physically while also affecting us on an emotional level the same way that food does. All I’m really hoping to convey is that food matters. It’s an honor and a privilege to feed the people in our lives, and to gather around a table where there is always, always home to be found.”

While all of this is true for me when it comes to food – the memories, the comfort, the nourishment, it was really the pieces about gathering around food, or around the table, that struck me. We gather in joy and in grief. We gather seeking comfort in bad times and enrichment in good times. And the table is the place where there is always home to be found. 

That. Will. Preach! 

As we “gather” around the table this Sunday to celebrate communion, home will be found; because around the table, there is always home to be found. Though we come to the table – a few of us in the sanctuary but most of us in our homes, a few of us dressed in regular clothes but most of us dressed in our sweatpants, a few of us with bread and juice but many of us with whatever we could find in our pantry that’s close enough – we come to the Lord’s table; and there is home to be found. Though we come to the table scattered throughout the city and beyond, we come to the Lord’s table together – together with one another, and together with believers of every time and place; and we find home in Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. 

See you at the table, my friends!