Room at the Table

Let us delight the heart of God and make room at the table for all who will come.

My tribe has a checkered history with forced conversions, violent power-grabbing, and militaristic exercise of religious dominance. To deny that is to deny history. To not care is to ignore scripture. We are flawed in our common humanity and sin with a lust for power that we are willing to exercise with violence and coercion.

Our religions, no matter how legitimate or illegitimate can be illegitimately co-opted as an excuse for that power-lust and every evil methodology we can muster to acquire what we want and think we deserve. At the moment, the world is experiencing an extreme and frightening expression and demonstration of this. It is not the first in history and probably will not be the last.

Everyone has a different name for it and the names are debated, but it is all one thing throughout history. There are political and military battles that shall be waged, but the most important battle is unseen; it is timeless; it is the most real. It is waged in the secret place of prayer, the public place of speaking truth in love, and the relational place of living the life of faith to which we have been called - to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

We must live with a sense of finitude in a universe of infinitesimal possibility. We are in a string of dots connecting and crisscrossing to weave a fabric of canvas upon which the drama of history is painted in brilliant colors with compelling artistry. But our role in the whole is time-stamped and today is important and precious.

Let us live it.

Let us delight the heart of God and make room at the table for all.