THE TABLE - regularly

"And you shall set the bread of the Presence on the table before me regularly." Exodus 25:30

Think about your life? What you do? An average day? Where do you place your deepest connections with God? Do you have a regular time with God?

(pause for reflection)

I'm guessing many of you answer: I don't. I know I should, but I don't have a regular time with God. Most people I talk to say they want a more regular time with God and admit their lives are far from it. 

The good news is your not alone. The bad news is you can't stay this way. 

What is Regularly?

There are many ways we use the word regular. We drink regular coffee. We fill our tank with regular gas. We shop at the regular stores with the regular things for sale. This means the customary or the standard way of doing things. In addition, regular sometimes implies everything is in order: at the deli stand the sandwiches were place in a regularly order. The newspapers were in a regular stack.  

THE TABLE - in detail

"And you shall set the bread of the Presence on the table before me regularly." Exodus 25:30

Late at night. The swooshing of paint, scratching, dry brushes dipped in paint, only to become dry again. My life has been in a period of waiting, expectation. Each day a moment of pause till our little baby comes. In the evening I write and paint. Two lights point onto a canvas made from reclaimed wood, fractured, forgotten, left by the side of the road. I want to redeem them. I wait for my baby.

The Presence "On the Table"

This verse Exodus 25:30 says to set the bread of the Presence "on the table", like it's no big deal. The table I mean. It just assumes the table exists. Which it does, but not by shear luck or happenstance. It's a table made from pure ingenuity, detailed work. It's a table built with intention. 

Our lives with God, living in his presence, are to be the same: beauty in the details.

THE TABLE - presence

"And you shall set the bread of the Presence on the table before me regularly." Exodus 25:30

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.