The Dining Room Table
It has been quite a couple of months at our household. My oldest daughter graduated from college in December
and got married in January! Both events
evoked so many memories and so much emotion some of which center around an ordinary
dining room table.
When my wife was a college student she moved into a house
with a few friends and her mother bought her a dining room table. Just an ordinary table from some garage
sale. It was around that table that she
shared meals with her friends. With
those college friends she played games around that table and on that table she studied
her way through college. Upon graduation
that table went with her. More meals
and times together with friends followed.
She moved from Texas to Pennsylvania where she met me. We married and that table became our first
dining room table in our first home in southeastern Pennsylvania. We shared our first meals together as husband
and wife around that ordinary table. We
enjoyed meals with old and new friends.
We welcomed our first child to that table. It was to that table that we pulled up her highchair. We shared family meals around that
table. We played games on it and welcomed
more friends and family to gather around it.
The table legs bear the claw scratchings of our first pet, a cat named
Annie. We moved to Texas and the table
came with us. Another daughter came
along and she called it her first table and later we welcomed two sons to our family and to our table. The six of us often sat around its surface. Their friends would gather around it eating
and playing. Our extended families assembled
around that table as holiday meals were served from it.
My daughter who just got married has moved to Indiana where
her husband is from. Last month, my
other daughter and I moved a van load of wedding gifts, clothes, and furniture
to her new apartment - her first home as a married woman. In that loaded down van was that ordinary
dining room table.
We set it up in her dining room and gathered the now old and
worn-out chairs around it. The
well-traveled table had found a new home where new memories would be made. As it sat there in that small dining room all
I could do was stare at it! The sight of
it filled me with an indescribable joy. I
began to think about how much that table has meant to me. I could picture all those people who had
joined me at that table. I could begin
to see all of the events that took place around that table. Meals, games of Monopoly and Risk, card
games, conversations, prayers. And then
a thought struck me. Wouldn’t it be
wonderful to be able to call back all those people who have gathered around
that table and invite them back? For all
of us, hundreds I suppose, to be gathered around that ordinary table once
again. How wonderful that would be!
Knowing that that could never happen it then dawned on me
that something like that however will happen.
One of the great hopes of Christianity is the anticipation of being reunited
with all those people with whom we have shared our lives. To all be gathered together in one place in
an assembly of friendship, fellowship, and love. Certainly that will be one of the great joys
of heaven.
In my mind I imagine a place. A place of reunion where all the joys of this
life are accumulated into one unending celebration. And in that place a table. Big enough for everyone to gather around yet
somehow small enough to enjoy everyone's presence. And the very thought of that table fills me
with an indescribable joy. It reminds me
of the refrain of an old hymn, "When we all get to heaven what a day of
rejoicing it will be."
