Have a Seat at the Table This Easter
By: Khalilah Shelton
The last couple of months have been ladened with way too many fast food runs, snack packs and eating in the car. Every basketball season, my family and I go from game to game, practice to practice, missing so many evenings of sitting at our dining room table for a decent meal. It isn't even so much about the food, but about taking the time to slow down, sit down and eat. As I was thinking about my seasonal eating habits, I began to look at my spiritual habits as well. I was wondering why I had been having such a thirst for a good Bible study or a time in community. It’s probably because I have been eating so much spiritual fast food. I have been listening to my audio Bible while I get dressed in the morning or playing it while I fall asleep at night. Those are not bad things, but they had replaced my time of sitting down and being spiritually fed at the Lord’s huge, plentiful, open table. Scriptural Happy Meals from an app were not cutting it. Listening with good intentions for a couple of verses and then letting my mind wander off about what meetings I had and what was for dinner that night could hardly be considered Bible study.
In the gospels, we read about how Jesus took time to sit and have a meal with His disciples as he prepared them for the most difficult time of His life, and their discipleship. Jesus sat them down to break bread and build trust. When we sit together and share a meal with the Lord, how do we learn to trust Him?
We learn to trust what he instructs us to do. In Luke 22:13, Jesus tells the disciples to go into the city and have dinner in a stranger's attic. Though this seemed peculiar, even for the time, “they went and found it just as he had told them and they prepared the Passover.” Their trust led to their faithful obedience.
We also learn to trust His love for us.
“I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
This is my body, which is given for you.
This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:14-19).
Jesus gives us a tangible way to remember His love for us. He gives the bread and cup so that we may never forget that He completely fulfilled His mission to save us forever. We should rejoice in that!
We also learn to trust that Jesus will confront all of His enemies. The text quickly goes from dinner preparations to confrontation. Jesus is not ignorant about the hearts of those around Him. He will confront every enemy at its proper time. Dinner time was the proper moment (Luke 22:21-22). Though Jesus doesn't escape the hand of his enemy this time, He does not go about ignorant of who His enemies are. They do not go unnoticed or unpunished. We can trust that the Lord does the same for our enemies as well.
Lastly, He shows us that we can trust him with our lives. Jesus tells Peter that he will deny Jesus three times before morning breaks. Peter, and everyone of us, is fully known by God. We can boast of our faithfulness and how far we are willing to go for the sake of Christ, but Jesus knows what's in the depths of our souls. He knows our frailty and that the devil seeks to sift us like wheat. Yet God, in Christ, has made a way for us to be restored when we fail, upheld when we're weak and sustained through every season of life.
This Easter, I invite you to trust the Lord afresh. Slow down and pull up a seat at the Lord's abundant table; partake. He is waiting for us.