Do you remember your dinning room table growing up? It's where memories were made sitting there with your family? Some of my most memorable conversations happened at our dining room table. It's often where important decisions where made. Think about discipline and the shaping of your family? Many times it was at the table where our identities were formed.
The Dinner Table
I remember fork marks. That's what I remember from my table growing up. We had this huge (seven kids) thick brown wooden table. It had benches down the middle and two chairs on either end, one for my dad, the other for my mom. We'd sit stretched out between them two. In the spot where I usually sat there were fork marks stabbed into the table. I would run my fingers over them. I don't remember who put them there? I could have been me. Then again there were five brothers in my family, it could have been my twin brother benjamin or little brother daniel. I think I was about ten or eleven then, just old enough to know that fork marks were not appropriate where our family gathered together as a presence.
We grew up poor, with a hard working dad. We lived the middle of the desert running around as kids on five acres of land stretched out before the Superstition Mountains in Phoenix, Arizona. I knew come hell or high water, that no matter what happened during the day, we would all gather at the table as a presence, as a family. For the Israelites in the wilderness the presence of God was becoming their identity as his people.
The Wilderness is God's Grace
The wilderness - although fraught with incredible hardship - was God grace in their lives. It was like the desert where I grew up, hot in the day and cold at night. They were nomadic, so no place was home. Their identity was doing summersaults in the confusion of who they were meant to be. They couldn't even stop long enough to grow crops. God instead provided mana for them to eat and water for them to drink. In all of this he also provided the law and instructions on how to build the tabernacle: the place that would hold the presence of God.
The presence of God is his gift to his people. He could have left them and chosen another. They grumbled and complained, and stabbed forks into their tables. They turned from him ready to worship idols at the drop of a hat. And yet, God continually reminded them of his presence, the one thing which made them different from everyone else. We see this in Exodus where God has them build a tabernacle (a house for God); and in this tabernacle was a table on which to set the bread of the Presence regularly (Exodus 25:23-30).
The Presence of God
This is the same presence of God that you and I experience. This is the same presence because God is the same God and his mission is the same mission. He wants you to know him and have a relationship with him as he becomes your father. And in many ways we are also in a wilderness. You are in the wilderness called 'life' and there are many ups and downs you will face. You may be in one now. You may have just gone through one. You may be about to hit another one. Your identity it not to be on the world around you, but the presence of God that is calling you to be his own son or daughter.
What Christ Means to Us?
This is why we have such an appreciation for Christ. When he came into the world, his sinless life and death on the cross broke the power of sin. When this happened the curtain in the temple (the modern day tabernacle in Jesus' time) was torn from top to bottom, making known to the world a new identity. All of creation is now being called into the presence of God. All people given the chance to know him as their father. A shout now rings across the world saying: "Come to the table of God all you who are hungry and thirsty." Like a dinner bell ringing across many lands God calls his people to his table.
