A Grace at the Table

Is there anyone you're not willing to share this Table with?

We want to say no. We want to say that there are persons we don't think would share the Table with us, and that there are persons that we don't think should have a place at the Table, but we want to surrender our faith and display our righteousness and declare that if Jesus has made a space for someone, then of course, we will, too. 

I know we want to because I want to, and I'm sure that I'm not alone. In fact, I think I have very boldly said this: "I will share the Table with anyone. There's enough grace for everyone." 

But if I'm being honest, there are some persons in this world that would be harder to share a table with than others. And they're not the persons you might think. 

We've convinced ourselves that there's a certain righteousness in saying we would struggle to share the Table with certain groups of sinners, whatever sin it is that we deem more dastardly than the others. Murderers. Rapists. Pedophiles. Thieves. You know, Judases. We know there's no real righteousness in that, as we are all sinners, but we still feel a sense of (self)righteousness when we say it. 

I've had a challenging interpersonal week that has brought me to a place of thinking about this anew, and honestly, the persons I think I have the hardest time sharing the Table with...are the persons who think I don't deserve to be there. 

They are the persons who hold some kind of bitterness against me, some kind of grudge. They are the persons who judge my life and deem it less worthy. They are the persons that I know are looking down their noses out me, or out the sides of their eyes. The persons who are watching me because they think that in this whole grand picture of grace, I'm the piece that doesn't fit. 

Ouch. 

Not because they're right, but because...they're right. 

There are persons in this world who hold what I believe is a wrong opinion of me. But I'm at the point in my life where, when I encounter these persons, I'm not concerned with trying to prove them wrong any more. It doesn't do any good. I know who I am, and I know who the overwhelming majority of others in my life know me to be. Still, there's something that stings about these wrong impressions that a very few still hold. 

And what stings about it, as I reflect on my experiences this week with such things, is that they bring to my mind, to the forefront of my heart, the overwhelming amount of grace that it has taken for me to get this far. They bring to mind just how much saving God's really had to do in my life and how...they're right; I'm not as perfect a person as I'd like to think on my good days, on my regular days, on my normal days when no one is there to remind me, in stark force, that I'm not. 

It's hard to share the Table with someone who doesn't think I belong here because they remind me, even in their lies, that...I don't. It is only by grace that there is a space for me here. 

That's humbling. 

But then...it's supposed to be. We ought to be humbled by the grace that brings us to this Table. 

So, to my enemies...to those who think I don't belong here...thank you. Thank you for reminding me what a grace this truly is.