For years and years we've talked about a big ole'farmtable...... We had a very very very old picnic table from my grandparents that my parents had...... Anyhow it's made of cedar..... We took the table all apart years ago and planed out all the boards from the table...... We also had other pieces of furniture we took apart, pieces of wood we collected on the side of the road..... Basically this table evolved over time and means a great deal to me because of how important the wood is that we used.....
Then to top it off, Eric handcrafted the whole thing for us! Means so much more with that....... And then the reason for this table...... So much meaning with this table...... Last year we did a bible study and one of the questions in the study in the Breathe study by Priscilla Shirer was, "what is something you hoard because you fear that the Lord won't provide for you? What do you hold back from out of fear"...... The premise of it was that in life we tend to over indulge in things the Lord intends to be a blessing for our lives.....
Anyhow the item I placed in the blank was "food".......
We don't have a lot of money, and we live very very carefully...... Sometimes I panic when the girls have friends over, over and over again.... I panic that, "oh my the girls and their friends have eaten so much food what are we gonna do....." I'm just being real here. Very real that for years I've panicked over food.......
It's silly, yes I know but a very real fear of mine..... Like I said, we've always had to be super careful.... The last few years we've been able to make more money and make some good financial decisions that have helped elevate those circumstances yet I still find myself falling back into those fears and patterns and have to remind myself that life isn't like that anymore and the Lord has blessed us and we don't need to fear so much......
When you've lived like that for so long it's easy to mentally go back there..... Anyhow, this table means so much...... It means the Lord provides. We want people to eat at our table...... Symbolically speaking the Lord wants us to open our homes to others, our lives to others...... So much can happen over a meal..... My grandpa Stenson always always prayed the same prayer at every meal, "come Lord Jesus be our guest and let these gifts to us be blessed, amen"...... This table is just that.... In memory of him. Jesus please come to our table. Thank you for what you've given to us, provided for us..... We are blessed.
