I have a big house.  It was a gift from God and, more specifically, an inheritance from Paul’s parents.  There are rooms there for every use – for Paul’s business, for our family’s entertainment, for sleeping, cooking and bathing.   There’s even a place right in the front door we call the Life Room.   This room has a piano, a stack of worship music, a sitting area, a small cd player, lots of plants and photos of children – ours and the ones we love from other families.  There is no television, no radio and no clock. 

It is a special place to our family – the place we gather for coffee and conversation on a Saturday morning.  The place where we’ve counseled troubled marriages and cried with friends over both their struggles and our own.  It is where I sat, looking out the picture window anxiously praying when my twins first learned to drive.  It is, for me now, a place of study and quiet contemplation.  A place to just go and BE with God.

At the beginning of communion, the cantor says “Christ our Lord invites to His table all who love Him…”

I find those words so comforting.  Christ invites us to His table – all of us, every day, every hour!  “Come to my table.  Rest.  Be filled.  Be with me.”

Paul and Pam's Life Room

This morning He said it again – “Come and sit with me, Pam.  Come to that special place in your home and heart that you’ve set aside just for Me.  Let’s get close before the sun rises and the day takes over.”

Amazing.  God, my lover, wanting me to come to Him!

And my response?  I sat in my overstuffed chair, cat in my lap, coffee in hand and watched the news.  I thought “in a few more minutes Lord – then I’ll go and sit with you.”  I was too comfortable where I was at – alone with my distractions – to walk 20 feet to spend time with the one I profess to love so much.

Twenty minutes later I got a call that changed my morning.  No emergency.  Just an “I forgot” that resulted in an unplanned drive to Post before I went to work.  At first I reacted angrily to my family’s forgetfulness but as I drove back to Lubbock I began to think about how different my morning would have been if I had responded to God – gone into that room that I love and just sat with Him, listening and getting to know more about the God that pursues me so ardently.

Would I still have had to make the drive to Post?  Yes.  The facts of the day wouldn’t have been different.  But I know my heart about it would have been.  I wouldn’t have had to undo the damage – confessing my anger before it became resentment.  Calling my daughter to apologize for the bad example I had set.  Once again crying out to God, “I’m sorry!” for reacting out of selfishness.  I could have cheerfully served my family from the beginning, recognizing that we all experience an occasional “oops!” and need someone we can count on to help us out.

In those last moments as I pulled up to my office, I realized that God didn’t want me to be with Him this morning so I could avoid the difficulties of my day but so I could respond out of His heart to the things that would try to unravel me.

God gives me every good thing – including patience and His merciful heart!  All I really have to do to be LIKE Him, is to come to His table.