Set The Table

A few months ago my father was temporarily in an assisted living facility and my sisters and I would go visit him. I of course got to know some of the other residents and would talk to them each day we were there. We would go to the dining room with my father for lunch and dinner so he didn't have to eat alone. The facility isn't full so there's plenty of room in the dining room, however, I noticed quite a few people sitting alone at their table including my father. I could understand my father sitting alone because he's not the nicest person to dine with but the other residents were quite pleasant, so why were they alone? I decided to be friendly and asked one of the women if she wanted to join us. She looked at me kind of baffled and said “no” that she was at “her table.” She literally grabbed the sides of the table with her tiny frail hands and held onto it showing ownership. I got the same response from a few of the other women. They each had their own table and rather than have company they wanted the security or the routine of sitting at their table even if it meant eating alone. The first woman I asked has been living in this place for 12 years! She moved there with her husband who had Alzheimers but he passed away 2 years later so she has been there alone for 10 years. No children or family and apparently no close friends in Florida. How very sad and yet she did not want to join us and leave “her table.” I could not get passed this experience of being alone rather than having fellowship.
As always it got me thinking about what kind of things our frail hands are holding onto. What keeps us from having fellowship with others? Isolation is one of the greatest tools of the enemy. As long as we are alone he can fill our minds with lies about ourselves and others. He can make us second guess what Jesus tells us about ourselves and more importantly who we are in Christ. We shouldn't be surprised, he did it to Jesus. Remember when Jesus was in the desert for 40 days being tempted by satan. (Matthew 4)What did he keep saying to Him?
1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down.
Satan was trying to get Jesus to question if he was truly the son of God. He does the same thing with you and me. If you are a child of God you would be able to forgive. If you are a child of God you wouldn't be in this mess. If you were a child of God you wouldn't hate yourself.
Recently someone asked me the question “why does it feel so weird to have people tell me they love me?” What this person was really saying is satan is making them question who they are because if they were really a child of God they would know they were loveable. This person has been dining alone, holding onto a table of rejection BUT asking the question was a great way for her frail hand to begin to let go.
I'm going to share another personal story with you. Growing up with my mother was a challenge to say the least. My mother was the kind of person that agreed with whoever she was with at the time. A person chameleon if you will. It would make me so angry because I felt like she never stood up for anything and was lying every time she changed her mind to agree with who she was with. Part of the problem was I never felt safe with her because if she told me she liked something about me, which wasn't very often, it could change if someone else didn't like it. I know that sounds kind of confusing but I hope you get what I'm saying. The Holy Spirit spoke to me the other day about this. He told me the real problem was my mother didn't know who she was. She had been dining alone her whole life and the only way she could fellowship with other people and feel accepted was to be just like them. I had never thought about it like that. I remember my whole life people saying things like “it's just Rose Mary, she's always making stuff up, you never know when to believe her.” But no one including me every tried to find out WHY she did this. What was satan saying to her. If you were a child of God you would... This of course broke my heart and gave me a whole new perspective of my mother. It also broke my heart because now that she has Alzheimers I can't even go back and tell her I understand and make sure she knows God loves her just the way He created her. That she was His chameleon. This would be a really sad story if it ended there but my sweet Jesus would never do that. The Holy Spirit reminded me that I may not be able to reach her but He not only could but would! Gems let's not allow the enemy to make us question who we are in Christ. Let's not dine alone when we are feeling insecure but reach out for fellowship to one another and set our tables with love and acceptance.