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My grandmother recently shared something on Facebook about connection that I thought was enlightening. This is what she wrote:
A lady recently being baptized was asked by a co-worker what it was like to be a Christian. She replied, “It’s like being a pumpkin:
God picks you from the patch, brings you in, and washes all the dirt off you may have gotten from the other pumpkins.
Then he cuts the top off and scoops out all the yucky stuff.
He removes the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc.
Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all the world to see.”
I love the fall. The refreshing cool breezes in the morning and the colors. I especially love all of the root vegetables you get to start cooking with and yes, you guessed it, the PSL. Bring all the pumpkin all the time. In the next week or so, I’ll share my pumpkin bread recipe. It’s actually my mom’s, but it is amazing.
This little story reminds me just how much Jesus has to ‘clean’ out of my heart on a daily basis. I am constantly bombarded with attacks from the enemy from all sides that tell me that I’m not good enough, or I’ve made too many wrong decisions. That is just not true. Jesus doesn’t get all of the string and goop out in one scoop. When you carve a pumpkin you have to use different tools, you meticulously carve and pay attention to every piece of flesh you cut out. Jesus is spending some time on you. He is spending some time on me. He wants to be able to put the light inside of us for everyone to see His glory.
Matthew 5:14 – paraphrased; “its a dark world. don’t hide. be the light.”
When I think about the places and times I’m at my best, that I’m truly the light, it’s around my table. Sharing a meal is one of the most intimate times because you truly open yourself up. If you think about it, no other animal on earth sits around a table. We are the only creature that does that.
There is so much more to a table then just consuming food. It’s a place where we truly connect. Connection is so important to human life. It is the way that God created us. We desire community and relationships with others, and it is at the table that those relationships can be nourished and flourish. In fact, it’s worth noting that at the center of the spiritual lives of God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments, we find a table: the table of Passover and the table of Communion.
In the fast-paced, tech-saturated, attention-deficit-disordered culture that we live in, Christians need to recover the art of a slow meal around a table with people we care about. Sharing the light that Christ has put inside of us.
So clear off your table. Prepare it for guests, just like Jesus has prepared the table for you. Invite 1 person over. Maybe 2. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be real. And show me how you do it over on IG!
And always, if you need recipe ideas, I’m your girl.
