background on Table

Celebrated as one of the greatest writers of all time, French writer Marcel Proust (1871–1922) filled out a personal questionnaire at the start of his career for a magazine like the one we know today ...

In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament ) , scholar Ken Bailey provides helpful context...

It was Show and Tell day in a 1st grade class room,. The teacher picked 3 boys to stand up and present their objects to the class. The first boy stood up and said “Hi, My name is Abram, I’m Jewish and...

The tabernacle consists of a courtyard and a tent inside, separated into two sections: ‘The Holy Place’ and ‘the Most Holy Place’ or ‘Holy of Holies’. Inside the Holy Place is a table that holds ‘the ...

We become who we are in the environment of home. We are shaped by our families. Home is formative. Sociologist Cody C. Delistraty explored the most recent scientific literature for Atlantic Monthly an...

Mark Rutland humorously recalls a survey asking Americans which words they most long to hear. As expected, the top response was, “ I love you. ” The second was, “ I forgive you .” ...

There’s a sermon by the great Tony Evans in which he uses an illustration involving dishes to make sense of the term “holy.” In his home, and in most homes really, there are two types of dishes. There...

I once heard a description of what meals are like in heaven. The saints are seated on either side of a four-foot-wide banquet table. The table is set with delicious foods on every plate. The only thin...

In his helpful book Peace Catalysts , Rick Love shares a poignant example of how sharing a meal can break down the familiar walls of status, power, and economics: In 2011, my wife, Fran, and I we...

God wants to feed his people. In keeping the one tree from them, God protected Adam and Eve. When they broke table fellowship with God, they suspected that God was withholding something good, that thi...

A man was having dinner with his parents at a London restaurant known for its high cuisine. The food was superb, and the setting was complete with chandeliers, crystal, and silver-creating an elegant ...

It can be great fun to put up a tent in your backyard to play in or sleep in. Imagine what it would be like for someone else to put up a tent in your backyard and begin living there—right in your back...

A man named Jim Haynes died last year at 87 years old, in Paris where he’d lived for decades. Jim Haynes was known as the “man who invited the world over for dinner.” Why? Because for more than 40 yea...

Paul talks about “the table of the Lord” in 1 Corinthians 10:21. We are hosted by Jesus. In Roman Catholicism the bread itself is effectively the host, because it hosts the physical presence of Christ...

On a little study table in my office, there’s a card with a quote from Victor Hugo’s epic novel Les Misérables: My coat and I live comfortably together. It has assumed all my wrinkles, does not hurt...

In the world of ecology, the tallest trees in a forest form a canopy that is called the overstory. It provides shade for the understory—all the vegetation that grows beneath the uppermost layer of fol...

Members of the Natomo family sit on the flat roof of their mud house in Mali, Africa, posing for their early morning photograph. Their earthly belongings are arrayed in front of them. Two kettles, pla...

When our daughter Sara was four years old, she burst into the house carrying a water-filled baggie in which swam a wide-eyed burst of sunshine. “Look what they gave us at the birthday party!” (Gee tha...

God wants to feed his people. In keeping the one tree from them, God protected Adam and Eve. When they broke table fellowship with God, they suspected that God was withholding something good, that thi...

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson wanted to make a point. The new British Ambassador had just come to Washington - the representative of the aristocratic government the new Republic had defeated in ...

In a television commercial for Facebook, a large, gregarious family sits down to a meal. It is a Norman Rockwell moment. In our positive associations to family dinner, myth and science come together. ...

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: “tappers” or “listeners.” Tappers received a list of twen...

New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop N. T. Wright recalls being at a party once when someone decided to read a portion of the seventeenth-century Prayer Book for laughs. The Prayer Book includes ...

In his book Scream-Free Parenting , family therapist Hal Runkel recounts a visit to the Waffle House with his family that went horribly awry. It was a Saturday morning and the place was busy beyo...

It would be impossible to overestimate the impact these meals must have had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as friends and equals Jesus had taken away their shame, humiliation, and gu...

Good liturgy, whether formal or informal, ought never to be simply a corporate emoting session, however “Christian,” but a fresh and awed attempt to inhabit the great unceasing liturgy that is going o...

I remember growing up in the ’80s (yes, that dates me) when all kinds of fears and phobias seemed to be in the air—fear of the dark, snakes, scorpions, spiders. Someone in my own close circle was afra...

Origins matter to humans. The Antiques Roadshow has held the interest of its viewers for over thirty-five years with a simple formula of determining the origins of items people have not properly...

It’s been said home is the place where they have to let you in. While it’s a reach to say I’m friends with each of my family members, our relationships thrive because we share a mutual, understood res...

Have you ever seen As Good As It Gets, the late-nineties film starring Jack Nicholson? In it, Nicholson plays a cranky, misanthropic writer in New York City, snapping at anyone who crosses his p...