My Old Table

The bustle around our supper table comes to a close and the children get up leaving a mess of crumbs and sticky fingerprints in their wake.  I look at this old wooden table and remember fondly the feelings of bliss and happines when I took the $100 that my dad sent to his young, adventurous, and poor daughter who had left for Guatemala with big dreams in her heart and no money in her pockets and spent it on a hand-made wooden table. 

And I am faced with a choice.

I can remember how the chairs wobbled and shook when we sat down to eat.  I can glance with contempt at the two chairs against the Wall in which no one will ever sit again- IF they value their behinds and don't wish to fall flat onto the floor!  I can moan inwardly as my washcloth brushes over stains and cracks along the table surface.  I can recall how crowded and crunched 5 or 6 of us have felt around this table when we have guests.

OR

I can see that this table is so much more than just a table.  It is the promise of better things to come.  This table represents all the parts of my life that aren't as I choose them to be, yet I know are only temporary.   The way in which I care for this table and other areas of my life shows the state of my heart.  If I can't care for what I have with a sense of Pride and excellence, why would God entrust something more to me?  And so as I make a choice to lovingly care for the things God has given me I realize that I am caring not only for my present but also for my future.  I am practicing for things that will come.

Thus, the nightly cleaning ritual has become a spiritual exercise for me; a time to reflect on all the áreas of my life that are serving as a practice ground as I wait in anticipation of something better to come.  And that, my friends, is a lesson much more dear to me than the $100 invested in this old table of mine.