The Centerpiece

Quick question.

Do other places in the U.S.—or the world, for that matter—do the whole decorating tables thing at churches and other events? Or is it just a Southern thing?

The first time I did this was around the same time I started encountering Jesus without The Bully hanging around. If you remember from The Wrestle, this wasn’t during one of my best seasons.

I remember being really proud of my table, and I feel like I learned a lot about decorating one.

The key is, you start with the centerpiece and build around it.

Sometimes, I find it so interesting to look back and realize that even during one of the most broken seasons of my life, the Lord was already way ahead of me. If you are in one of those seasons now, be encouraged. He is indeed going before you.

After this first table, this became a little yearly tradition of sorts—one that turned into something fun and intentional that I did with my grandmother.

Which really meant she wanted me to design it, and she would pay for everything and just help me with whatever I needed her to do.

I will never forget the year I felt inspired to not only decorate a table pretty for pretty’s sake, but to intentionally use the centerpiece as a way to encourage the people sitting around it.

I had this cheap, probably Hobby Lobby, sign hanging on my bedroom door at the place I was staying. It said, “Bloom where you are planted.”

I know, I know, it was cheesy and probably a little overdone.

But I decided to build our whole table around a garden theme with this sign being the focal point. I was intentional about everything. I stacked boxes to elevate the sign, we lit candles, and then my grandmother and I got flowers. I especially wanted to include flowers from her very own garden. For me, those were the highlight.

Then I took it a step further and borrowed some mismatched china from a friend, creating each place setting to be special and unique. Though I never said it out loud, the idea was that each person coming was special and unique, so each place setting should be too.

Their drinking glasses, though? They were all the same. My grandmother had these beautiful patterned glass… goblets? (I think that’s what they’re technically called.) I loved them.

This isn’t the best picture of the table, but you can get the idea.

After that year, that was always my goal when decorating tables. I wanted it to have purpose. I wanted the details to say something encouraging to those occupying the seats. I wanted the centerpiece to draw them into something deeper.

If you’re like me and super visual, here are a couple more examples.

This is one my sister and I did. It was like a picnic basket garden theme. We tucked different objects throughout the centerpiece, each paired with a Scripture that connected to it.

This particular year, my mom had the great idea to do an “Apples of Gold in settings of silver” theme.

You see it and get it. Hopefully.

The table became specific and intentional.

Jesus always seemed to find His way to a table. It wasn’t just that He loved to eat and drink, although I have no doubt He did indeed love it all. But I think for Him, it was more about the people around the table. In His world, it was a really big deal who you ate and drank with. Apparently, The Bully didn’t love the kind of people Jesus chose to participate in table fellowship with.

Oh, you thought The Bully was the new kid on the block? Think again. That guy, as well as the rest of the… well, I don’t know whether to call them the Peanut Gallery or the Three Ring Circus act… those guys—they’ve been around for centuries.

Don’t worry, though. Jesus has no problem at all calling them out.

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.” —Matthew 11:18-19

“A glutton and a drunkard.” I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that in order to get this kind of reputation, I think maybe this happened more than once. Like, it probably happened a lot. And hear me, I’m not in any way saying this reputation was true. I, in no way, believe Jesus was a glutton or a drunkard. But I am saying—and the Gospels seem to make this pretty clear—that who He shared these meals with wasn’t an accident. It was intentional.

What do you think?

So, we ended The Wrestle with God giving me invitations, things to do with Him. Not for Him. Not to make up for or fix anything. Just with Him.

I told you one of those things was this 7-week teaching series by Kristi McLelland— The Running Father.

Just jogging your memory.

Kristi asked this question that made me want to slap myself upside the forehead because I had never thought to ask it before.

What got you labeled as a sinner in Jesus’s world?

Ok, be honest, was I the only one who felt so dumb for not asking this way sooner?

Someone labeled as a “sinner” comes up quite a bit in the Gospels, and often it seems to be describing a certain kind of person. Not quite like the way we use the word today, when we say that everyone is a sinner. In Jesus’s world, The Bully seemed to have specific people he labeled as such. So again, the question is: how did one get this label?

Kristi phrased it something like this: Oftentimes “The Bully” would say that in order to be close to God, you had to do ABC. If you wanted to stay close to God, you had to do XYZ. And if you ever found yourself away from God, you had to do 123 in order to get back to Him. And if you didn’t do the ABCs, XYZs, and 123s, you were a sinner. 

Hmmm, interesting. 

That kinda sounds familiar.

That brings us right up to the table that I, and now you, are being invited to sit at.

“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’ So He told them this parable:” —Luke 15:1-3a

Here we are again. Jesus is hanging out (probably eating) with “tax collectors and sinners,” and some people are having a problem with it.

And I want us to pause here, because it is easy when you hear a story for the thousandth time to rush past it because what possibly could you see differently in two and a half verses?

We talked about in The Question that sometimes we need to ask a different question. Because the question you ask at the beginning of a story can change where you end up and who you meet at the end of it.

So, let’s ask:

What does this teach us about God?

The verse at the end of The Wrestle was Psalm 81:10: “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.”

In the Biblical world, telling stories was often how teachers taught. It was one way a rabbi shared his yoke— his perspective, understanding and interpretation of the Scriptures and what it looked like to live them out.

And in this moment, I think Jesus—whom the writer of Hebrews says is the “exact representation” of God’s being—is setting a table for us.

This hasn’t been easy for me to write about. Not because I haven’t wanted to share certain things, but because this is something God has had me literally walking out in my life. I am wrestling with what I’ve always been taught, what I’ve always thought, and suddenly I’m learning something different.

You know when you’re puzzling and you’ve got this one piece that looks like it fits—it seems like it fits—but the more you put the puzzle together, you realize that’s actually not the right piece at all, and it’s throwing the whole puzzle off?

That’s exactly how I feel!

Except here, in this setting called my life, I have often thought the table Jesus was setting held a centerpiece that looked like the cross.

Hang on, go with me for a second.

I thought He was inviting me to sit at a table where all I could see was my sin. The sin that put Him up there on that cross. And yeah, I could make it beautiful in my mind, maybe adding flowers and candles. I could even get behind looking at it as the triumph and victory that it was— maybe the more I stare at this, the more thankful I will be for what He did. Or even, maybe the more I stare at this, maybe then I will hate my sin more. Maybe then… just maybe, I’ll finally be able to overcome it.

Yeah, I think that’s really what I thought.

And I got up from the table because honestly, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I couldn’t take the guilt and shame and confusion of it all. I thought this was supposed to bring freedom and hope and joy, but all I felt was bondage and hopelessness and discouragement.

While all the while, The Bully mocked me and added one more thing to his never-ending list. The Peddler offered his condolences at my failed attempts with “treasure” that promised to “make me feel better”. And The Producer just tried to make a bunch of noise so I wouldn’t notice what was really going on.

But Jesus simply silenced the voices, and in His patient and gentle way, He took my hand and encouraged me to take a deep breath, sit down, and look again.

The cross wasn’t the centerpiece. The cross was the table itself. The very thing holding the entire feast. The cross was what made the table even possible. It was the bridge between the altar and the table.

Suddenly, I could see the table through a different lens. Because remember, the key to setting a table is building everything around the centerpiece. It overflows into every other piece on the table. It displays the theme of the table as if it were an event.

Repentance.

I haven’t exactly kept this a secret. This was the centerpiece I saw when sitting at the table Jesus invited me to.

But it didn’t look like I thought it would.

The way The Bully had once described it made it seem gaudy and over-the-top. There were protocols to admire it, and I couldn’t even think about touching it. I could only come so close. I had to keep a certain posture while seated in its presence, and I had to “maintain that posture the whole time”, he had said.

But the centerpiece before me was simple. And yet, it was beautiful.

I looked at Jesus sitting next to me. His grin was eager, and the light in His eyes looked like He was about to burst with excitement.

Because you see, the centerpiece before me was in the shape of a beautiful present.

“This is for you,” He said. “I want you to open it.”

Wait.

What?

Suddenly, I was very aware of myself, like I didn’t know what to do with my hands or my face. I wanted to avert my eyes to some place safe, but between the literal joy on His face and the elegant beauty of the gift, I didn’t want to look away from either.

I slowly leaned forward and gently pulled the first ribbon. I kept looking over at Him, double-checking to make sure I was really supposed to even be touching this thing. His steady knowing and obvious anticipation encouraged me on.

I opened it up, and a light came out of it that I wasn’t expecting. Suddenly, I noticed that this beautiful present wasn’t the only thing sitting on the table. The light from the gift seemed to have revealed the rest of the table setting.

My eyes grew wide and I heard Jesus laugh, which made me cautiously laugh too.

“Whatcha got there?” He asked.

I peeked in the box of light and saw a book. I pulled it out carefully and could tell it was old and sacred.

The book actually carried three stories:

The Good Shepherd

The Good Woman

The Running Father

”Can I read it to you?” He asked with more kindness in His voice than I ever thought possible.

“Yes, of course.” I responded not really knowing what to expect. After all, my mind was still reeling at the fact that Jesus had apparently set a table with a centerpiece that wasn’t just for looks.

Interesting.

To be continued…