There is a table that holds the world together.
A table that binds the young and the old, where “men and women are made” and babies chew on wooden legs. A place where life is ladled and songs are sung and children are “given instructions on what it means to be human,” as poet Joy Harjo writes in “Perhaps the World Ends Here.” Around this table, life begins and ends—a concentric circle wrapped around four rustic legs: the sharing of recipes, the planning of weddings and funerals, the reading of Scripture, and the sharing of the Cup.
In our kitchen, it’s an old maple table, its drawers full of playing cards and Bibles, candlestick holders propping up its too-short legs. A two-hundred-year-old table with cracks down the spine where the breadcrumbs fall.
This is where we are taught how to be human, where Christ becomes a person to us, where God meets with man. Here, the Spirit looks us in the eyes, laughs, tells us we are loved and to please pass the butter, while the Father serves the lamb.
What God wants most of all is us, friend, in all our mess, gazing back at Him with soup on our chin, saying, “I love You. I love You with all my most broken parts. I love You, and please fill in my cracks like this table with all Your breadcrumbs, dear Spirit.”
The table is where talk happens, real talk, about who we truly are when we are full. It’s the place where laughter happens when we are fed, because we finally feel safe enough to kiss joy. It’s the place where sadness happens, too, because love sits here on padded seats in a circle and invites what is real.
God wanted His tithe to be eaten in His presence. “Bring the firstfruits,” He said, “and come—come to this particular place, and then eat it together with Me.” (See Deuteronomy 14:23.) God, preparing a feast for His people just because He is love. This triune God with His three persons; and together They create a table, become the wine, the bread, the lamb. Then—like a girl giddy with a surprise to share—They say, “Invite them! Let them come! And We will serve them, Ourselves!”
Except the invited ones don’t come. They ignore God’s invite, these who would have no breath if it weren’t for Him. The Triune One sighs deep, says, “Then send for the ones in the byways and highways, for feed them We must.”
And so we arrive, the bedraggled, the hungry; we sit and we gaze into the face of the most loving of Gods, split three down the middle yet wholly One, pouring Himself into our goblets and serving Himself as the lamb, the bread, and the wine. And He says, “Eat. Drink. Remember Me.”
The world is a table upon which Christ serves Himself, and it holds us together. Come, friend. Let’s sip soup and watch our children grow. Let’s plan parties and comfort one another and serve life with a ladle, knowing He is with us. Always.
Lord, You who are the triune God, thank You for serving me. Thank You for loving me. I long to sit with You, to gaze at You, to know You, forever. Please talk with me, laugh with me, eat with me. I love You.
Edited excerpt from Commune with Me: An Invitation to Feast with Jesus, © 2026 by Emily T. Wierenga, published by Whitaker House. Used with permission.
EMILY T. WIERENGA is an award-winning writer and commissioned artist. Her other books include God Who Became Bread, Atlas Girl, Making It Home, and Chasing Silhouettes: How to Help a Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder, and she has contributed to publications like Christianity Today. She has also appeared on 100 Huntley Street and on My New Day TV. Emily founded The Lulu Tree, a nonprofit serving vulnerable families around the world. She lives with her husband and three children on a farm in northern Alberta, Canada. Visit emilytwierenga.com.