Full And Happy At The Lord’s Table

Joshua Crawford

Some exclusive restaurants may serve a small, carefully measured portion of food leaving its customers stopping for cheap burgers afterward, just to get that full feeling. Bigger appetites need a different dining experience altogether, like grandma’s house, where heaps of mashed potatoes and biscuits are piled high and grandma always asks, “Are you sure you’ve had enough?” Which experience best describes God’s love as you see it?

“You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies…” (Psalm 23:5) The type of meal we believe is on that table dictates the quality of our life. Do we feel the Lord serves delicate or hearty portions? In Exodus 16, the people of Israel are traveling through the wilderness after coming out of Egypt; 45 days in, they grumble to Moses about having an abundance of bread and meat while enslaved in Egypt yet now they’re famished. In response, the Lord covers the camp with quail in the evening and bread in the morning. In regards to the bread, “whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat.” (v. 18) How much food is on the Lord’s table? Scripture essentially answers, “How big of an appetite do you have?”

Ruth was a barren widow with nothing to give, but when she came into Boaz’s field, who is a character pointing to Jesus, she had plenty on her table. “And at mealtime, Boaz said to her, ‘Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.’ So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over.” (Ruth 2:14) Just as David said later in the 23rd Psalm, the fifth verse, as he sat at the table with his Lord, “my cup overflows.”

Who could forget when Jesus fed the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish? “And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.” (Luke 9:16-17) Jesus always satisfies, as He said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35)

What type of meal are you having with Jesus? If you’re starving for love, comfort, strength, or the power to change, you’re leaving the Lord’s food on the table. Scoot up to the table, open the Bible, seek Him in prayer, and “have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)