We Ate Standing Up Since March

You counted it last night and it has been since March.

Nobody in this house has eaten a meal sitting at that table since March, and you did not know that until you worked it out, because it happened one box at a time and nothing about it was ever decided.

It started with the weekend orders. Then it was easier to leave the scales out. Then the packaging went on the end, and then the end became two thirds, and now there is a narrow strip at one side where the post goes, and everybody eats standing at the counter or on their knees in front of the television.

And nobody has complained. That is the part that has been sitting badly with you since you counted.

I am not going to tell you to get premises or to be more organized, because that is advice and there is none of it here. I am going to talk about a verse with an order of operations in it.

Children around the table

There is a picture in the psalms of a household, and the detail in it is worth noticing because the detail is furniture.

It is a blessing on an ordinary home, and it puts a specific image in the room.

Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table. (Psalm 128:3, King James Version)

You have a table that was meant for people, and it has never once been only a surface. Psalm 128:3 pictures a household gathered round a table as the plain shape of a blessed home, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a kitchen where trays are being lifted off a long table.

Round about thy table. The psalm could have said anything. It could have been a gate, a field, a doorway. It says the table, because that is where a household is in the same place at the same time doing the same thing.

A table is not sentimental. It is a practical arrangement for people facing each other, and Scripture reaches for it when it wants to show a home that is working.

You are able to give a table back, and giving it has never once cost you the work. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an image from an old household psalm land on a man counting months, and Psalm 128:3 puts the children round about the table as the picture of an ordinary blessed house.

Nobody complained

Let me say what the silence has been, because it is the part that should be taken seriously.

They did not complain because they are kind and because it was temporary, and then because it had gone on long enough that complaining would have been a big conversation rather than a small remark. The window for a small remark closed in about April.

You were never being resented, and the quiet has never once meant nobody noticed. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what a household's silence actually contains, and the written word puts the children round about the table in Psalm 128:3 as the ordinary picture of a home.

And here is the thing that is easy to miss. They have not been putting up with the work. They have been putting up with not sitting down together, which is a different loss and a bigger one, and none of them would put it that way.

Eating is the one thing that happens every single day whatever else is going on. It is the only reliable meeting in most families, and this house has not had one since March.

You have a household that has been waiting quietly, and not one of them has ever once made a noise about it. His Spirit is the one who lets a man see what has quietly gone missing, and Psalm 128:3 reaches for a table when it wants to picture a family that is well.

Clear it and eat at it

So here is the exercise, and it is one meal long.

Clear the table. Today, not at the weekend. Move the work somewhere else, even somewhere worse, and eat one meal at that table with whoever is in the house.

You are able to clear one surface today, and clearing it has never once been a loss to the work. Psalm 128:3 puts a household around a table as the shape of a home, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that possible in an afternoon for a man who has not had the table since March.

And then leave it clear. That is the harder half. The work will want to come back onto it tonight, because the table is the best surface in this house, which is exactly why it was taken.

Put it on the floor of the spare room. Put it in crates in the garage. Whatever is necessary, and if it is less convenient, that is the price and it is a fair one.

You were never required to hand over the best room in the house, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries a man past the logic of convenience, and the written word pictures children round about a table in Psalm 128:3 rather than a household eating standing up.