The Leaf Is Still in the Table

Tonight we are making chicken and dumplings in a small pot, and the dumplings are far easier than anybody tells you.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Put two chicken thighs or a couple of pieces of whatever chicken you have into a pot with a chopped onion, a chopped carrot, a stick of celery if there is one, a bay leaf and enough water to just cover. Salt it well. Simmer it gently for thirty minutes until the chicken is cooked all the way through with no pink anywhere, then lift the chicken out, pull the meat off the bone, and put the meat back in the pot. For the dumplings, stir one cup of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder and a good pinch of salt together, then mix in about half a cup of milk until it is a soft sticky dough. Drop it in spoonfuls onto the simmering broth, put the lid on, and do not lift it for fifteen minutes. They steam rather than boil, and lifting the lid is the only way to ruin them. It feeds three, it costs a few dollars, and it is the most comforting thing in this whole collection.

Now, the reason I am writing is not the dumplings.

It is the leaf in the middle of your table.

It went in for a reason, a long time ago, and there was a season when it needed to be there every day. And the season changed, and the leaf did not come out, and now you eat at one end of a long table with an expanse of wood stretching away from you, and you put the mail on it.

And you have thought about taking it out. You have thought about it a lot. And every time, the thought arrives with something attached to it that makes you put the idea down again.

He cooked breakfast for the number who showed up

There is a scene at the very end of John's account that I want to put beside your table.

Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. (John 21:12, King James Version)

Look at the setting. It is early morning on a beach. There are seven of them, not twelve. Some are dead, some are elsewhere, and the group that gathers around that fire is smaller than the group that used to gather.

And He cooks for seven. He does not wait for the full number. He does not remark on who is missing. There is a fire, and fish, and bread, and He says come and dine to the ones who are there.

You are being invited to feed the people who came, and God has never once held a meal back until the old number was restored. John 21:12 has the risen Christ cook breakfast for a reduced company without one word about the gap, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and sets it beside a long table.

You have not been left with the lesser version of anything, and heaven has never once counted a gathering by who is not in it. It is written that He said come and dine, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the pot is coming up.

What the leaf is holding open

Now let me say the true thing about that piece of wood, because it is not furniture.

A table set for more than will come is a way of keeping a door open. As long as the leaf is in, the table has not admitted anything. Take it out, and the size of the room agrees with the size of the household, and that agreement is the thing being declined night after night.

I understand that entirely, and I am not going to tell you it is unhealthy or that you should have done it by now. There is real love in that leaf.

You are not keeping anybody alive by keeping a table long, and God has never once located a person's memory in furniture. Scripture puts it plainly in John 21:12, and the Holy Spirit carries it further than a page can: He said come and dine to seven men and never once counted who was missing.

But there is a cost, and it is this: every meal gets eaten beside a visible absence. Not remembering the people. Sitting next to a gap, three times a day, for years.

A long table with three people at it is not a verdict on a family. It is a piece of wood that has not been adjusted.

You are not letting anybody go by shortening a table, and God has never once located a person's memory in a dining room. The passage has Jesus feed the ones present without any reference to the ones absent, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates faithfulness from furniture.

You have been keeping something open for a long time, and that has been love and not denial. John 21 has a smaller company gathered around a fire that the Lord Himself built, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a reduced table a place where He is plainly present.

Lay only the places you have

Here is the practical part, and I am going to make it smaller than the leaf.

I am not asking you to take the leaf out tonight. That is a big physical act and it deserves its own day and possibly another person in the room.

Tonight, do something smaller. Lay the table for exactly the number who will eat, and lay it properly. Placemats or a cloth at that end, real plates, the good spoons, water in glasses. Make the part of the table that is being used look deliberately laid rather than temporarily occupied.

Because a small table set with care reads completely differently from a large table with three plates on one end. Same wood. Same three people. Entirely different room.

You are allowed to make the table you use look like the real one, and God has never once treated a smaller gathering as a temporary arrangement. John 21:12 has a fire, fish and bread arranged carefully on a beach for seven men, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an ordinary setting feel like a table that was meant.