This Table Used To Be Full

Eight chairs, and you use the one nearest the kitchen.

It is a big table. It was bought for a big household and it did that job extremely well for about thirty years, and there was a stretch in the middle where eight was not always enough.

And now it is a long piece of furniture with one person at the end of it.

So you do not use it. Not really. You eat in the chair by the window, or standing up, and the table sits there in the middle of the room being a monument to a number that is not the number any more.

And people say things. They say you should downsize, or get a smaller one, or turn the room into something else. And every one of those suggestions is sensible and every one of them makes something in you close.

So it stays, unused, and you eat by the window.

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

Nothing here is going to suggest you get rid of that table.

Not a smaller one, not a different room, and nothing at all about the size of the house. Those are decisions that belong to you and they are not the subject. What follows assumes the table stays exactly where it is, all eight chairs of it.

The Lord blessed the latter end more than the beginning

There is a line at the very end of Job about the two halves of a life, and the comparison it makes is not the one anybody expects.

So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning. (Job 42:12, King James Version)

The latter end more than his beginning.

More. Not as well as, and not a consolation for. The second half is described as the greater one, and this is said about a man who had lost more than almost anybody in that book.

And it is a strange claim, and the text makes it flatly, with no explanation of how that arithmetic works.

You are in the half the verse calls the greater one, and a house with fewer people in it has never once been the smaller end of a life. Job 42:12 puts the latter end above the beginning without explaining the sum, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman eating by a window.

And notice what it does not say about the losses.

It does not say they did not happen. The whole book is the losses, at enormous length, and nothing is retracted at the end. The latter end being greater is not a claim that the first part was fine.

Both stand. The losses stand and the latter end stands, and the verse does not resolve them against each other.

You have losses that stand and a latter end that stands, and a table that was full once has never once had to stop being what it was to be used now. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has been told to downsize, and Job 42:12 leaves the whole book of losses intact and makes its claim anyway.

What the table is doing in that room

Here is the practical half, and it is one observation.

That table is currently a measurement. It says eight, and there is one, and the difference is visible from every part of the room, and it makes the count every single time you walk past it.

And the not using it is what turned it into that. A table in use is a table. A table standing unused in the middle of a room is a record of a number, and it has been keeping that record for years.

Which means the suggestion people keep making, to get rid of it, is aimed at the right problem and the wrong object. The problem is not the table. It is that nobody eats at it.

You have a table that became a measurement rather than a table, and a thing standing unused has never once been able to stay what it was for. Job 42:12 speaks about a latter end being greater rather than about anything being replaced, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman who counts eight and one every time she walks past.

And here is the second half, which is the reason the suggestions make something close in you. That table is where those thirty years happened.

Getting rid of it would not be practical housekeeping. It would be removing the piece of furniture in that house that has the most of your life in it, and everybody recommending it is thinking about square footage and nobody is thinking about that.

So the resistance is right. The table should stay. It simply has to be used, because a table in use is the only version of it that stops being a monument.

You were right to resist and right about why, and a piece of furniture with thirty years in it has never once been about square footage. The Spirit of God is the one in that room with a table nobody should be asked to lose, and Job 42:12 refuses to treat a latter end as a lesser one.

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.

One place, at the end you actually sit at, laid properly: the plate, the cutlery, a glass, and whatever cloth or mat you would have used when there were eight.

And leave the other seven chairs exactly where they are. Do not move them, do not put any of them somewhere else, and do not lay the table in a way that makes a point about the empty ones. They are simply chairs that are not being used tonight, in the way chairs have always been not used on ordinary evenings.

You are laying one place at a table for eight rather than apologizing for seven, and a chair nobody is sitting in tonight has never once been an empty chair. Job 42:12 puts the latter end above the beginning and never once compares the numbers, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room with a woman laying one place at a long table.

Then the part that does the work, and it is one instruction: sit at that table rather than by the window. The window chair is comfortable and it is not the point. The table is the object that has been a monument, and the only thing that turns a monument back into furniture is somebody using it for what it is for.

And whoever is in that house tonight is enough. Tonight that is one, and one woman at a long table is a household having dinner.

You are turning a monument back into furniture, and one person at a table built for eight has never once been the wrong number for it. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with one plate and seven chairs standing, and Job 42:12 calls the latter end greater without any arithmetic to support it.