GodReflection: Does God Care Specifically About Me?
“Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” Luke 14:15

I come from a long tradition of the family table.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other friends had WELCOME signs engraved in doormats and hearts. There were always open chairs at the tables.

From toddler through high school graduation, our meals were served at the family table. However, from the table more than caloric nutrition was imparted to those seated in our family circle.  At each meal my dad directed a simple prayer to God: “We thank thee for this food and all other blessings.” Under that holy anthem we learned to laugh, converse, enjoy and tolerate each other.

On celebratory occasions the family table morphed into feast mode. Grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins gathered around a table weighed down with apple, pecan, peach and cherry pies along with a huge variety of cakes, meats, salads, and breads. Noticed I mentioned the pies first.

Our church family table was an even greater feast. Together we celebrated family and the blessing of abundance.

The prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel anticipate the time of a grand banquet with the Messiah at the table of God. With the arrival of Jesus, through parables, teaching, miracles, and quotations from Isaiah, Jesus set the banquet table in anticipation of His death and resurrection.

His stories were of feasts at weddings, a great supper, and miraculous mountain-side abundant supplies of food for hungry people. He invited a Roman centurion and a Canaanite woman into the presence of the Holy Banquet Hall.

His description of the Great Banquet tells of the Father who prepares a feast to honor His Son. The guest list is prepared and sent out. Every invitation was refused even to the point of mistreatment of those who delivered the Father’s request.

The Great Banquet doors lead to the Father’s table are swung open at His command. A new invitation went out to we common folks of the streets and alleys characterized as good and bad, poor, crippled, blind and lame.

At the end of the story there is still room as the master pleads, “Go out to the roads and the country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.”

It’s an almost unbelievable invite to receive an invitation from the Creator of the universe to dine with Him.

Jesus’ Great Banquet story saw fulfilment after his resurrection as faith was placed in him for admittance to the Father’s table.

In more somber moments the Great Feast helps me make sense of what seems in my mind as the delay in Christ’s return. There is still room at His table.

The Father wants every vacant chair filled.

To pick up on the duel feast imagery of the prophets and the gospels there is more to it than the grand eternal reward. There is a now aspect. I enjoy the table fellowship in the present.

My current reality of the foretold table feast is a resounding “Yes” in Christ. The Son-Messiah is the guest of honor. Because of the son, Paul the apostle uses colorful phrases to describe the table confidence I claim in the present.

Kingdom people are alive to God in Christ Jesus. Security is found in the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. In Christ Jesus we are all children of God through faith. We are blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing un Christ. We belong to God’s household.

So here is brick number seven of twelve to help me become less of an “earthoholic” and more addicted to the Holy as I seek God’s reassurance that He care specifically about me.

I have accepted the invitation. I sit with Him at the family table.

Stay tuned.

Dr. Gary J. Sorrells
A GodReflection: I Sit At the Family Table

Gary@Godreflection.org
http://www.GodReflection.org
http://www.MakeYourVisionGoViral.com