They Will Not Come To The Table

You called twice and then you stopped calling.

That is how it ended. Not with an argument. There was a period of about eight months where the calling produced a delay, then a negotiation, then somebody arriving with a phone and eating in four minutes, and then one evening you did not call and nobody noticed.

So now there is food on a stove and people come and get it, and it goes back to rooms, and the table is somewhere plates get put down on the way past.

And you are not going to make a thing of it. That is a decision you have made and you have your reasons, which are that a fifteen year old forced to a table is not at a table, and you are right about that.

But there is an evening in your memory from about four years ago where all of you were there, and you did not know at the time that it was the last one.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical.

Nothing here is going to tell you to make them come.

No rule, no family meeting, no policy about screens at dinner. Those all work for about eleven days and then cost more than they bought, and you already know that, which is why you have not done it. What follows does not require anybody in that house to change except you.

His father went out, and intreated him

There is a moment in Luke where somebody will not come in to a meal, and the striking part is what the father does about it.

And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and intreated him. (Luke 15:28, King James Version)

Therefore came his father out.

The son stays outside. The father does not send anybody, does not issue an instruction, and does not have the meal without noticing. He leaves the room where everything is happening and goes out to where the son is.

And the word is intreated, which is not commanded. It is closer to asking, and it is a strange thing for a father in that culture to be doing at all.

You are looking at a father who went out rather than one who insisted, and a son who would not come in has never once been a son the father stopped moving toward. Luke 15:28 has the father leave his own celebration and go outside, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man who stopped calling.

And notice what the father does not do.

He does not make the son's absence the subject of the evening. He does not go back in and tell everybody. He does not stop the meal happening, and the party is still going on behind him the entire time.

The meal continues. The father goes out. Both of those are true in the same verse.

You have a meal that continues and a going out that is separate, and a table that carries on has never once been the same thing as giving up on anybody. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has a stove with food on it and empty chairs, and Luke 15:28 keeps the celebration running while the father is outside.

What the table is for while they are not at it

Here is the practical half, and it is one observation that will be uncomfortable and is worth having.

The table stopped being laid because they stopped coming. Which means the table has been treated as a thing that exists for them, and in their absence it has quietly become a surface.

And there is somebody else in that house who eats every evening and has been eating standing up, or at a counter, or in front of something, for about four years.

That person is you. And the table has been unavailable to you because two teenagers do not use it, which is a strange arrangement when it is said out loud.

You have a table that stopped being yours when it stopped being theirs, and a room that two people left has never once stopped being a room you live in. Luke 15:28 has the father go out without the house stopping, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man who has not sat at his own table in four years.

And here is the second half, which is the whole strategy and it is the opposite of calling. Lay it and sit at it yourself.

Not as a message. Not pointedly, not with a look, and not accompanied by any remark about how nice it would be if anybody joined. A table that is laid as a rebuke is a rebuke, and a fifteen year old can read one from another room.

Laid and sat at because a man is having his dinner. That is all. And what happens then is not in your control, and about a third of the time over a few weeks somebody wanders through and stops.

You have something to do that requires nobody else's cooperation, and a man sitting down at his own table has never once needed an audience to be worth doing. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with a man and one plate, and Luke 15:28 has a father act on his own initiative without the son's agreement.

What tonight is, at that table

So here is the assignment. Lay the table tonight and eat one meal at it with whoever is in the house.

Lay it for however many are home, which may well be one. Lay it properly. A plate, cutlery, a glass, and sit at it and eat at the speed a person eats sitting down.

And do not call anybody. Not once. That is the hard part, and it is the whole difference between this and everything that did not work: no calling, no announcement, no mention of it at all.

You are laying it without calling anybody, and a table set with no message attached has never once been read as a demand. Luke 15:28 has a father who goes out rather than one who sends for anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room with a man laying one place.

Then the part that does the work, and it is about the going out, because the verse has two halves and this is the second. Sometime this week, go to where one of them is, and stay for four minutes, about something that is not dinner and is not a conversation about how things are going.

Something small they are interested in. That is intreating in the sense the verse means it: leaving the room where you are comfortable and going to where somebody actually is.

You have a going out available that has nothing to do with a table, and four minutes in somebody's doorway has never once been a smaller act than a meal they attended. The Spirit of God is the one in that hallway with a man who did not call anybody in, and Luke 15:28 has a father leave his own house and go to where the son was standing.