Sally Clarkson - The Lifegiving Table: Nurturing Faith Through Feasting, One Meal at a Time

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The Lifegiving Table: Nurturing Faith through Feasting, One Meal at a Time

Copyright 2017 by Sally Clarkson. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph of table copyright Maskot/Getty Images. All rights reserved.

Designed by Mark Anthony Lane II

Edited by Anne Christian Buchanan

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Clarkson, Sally, author.

Title: The lifegiving table : nurturing faith through feasting, one meal at a

time / Sally Clarkson.

Description: Carol Stream, Illinois : Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2017. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017025414| ISBN 9781496430632 (hc) | ISBN 9781496431547

(sc) | ISBN 9781496414205 (sc)

Subjects: LCSH: Dinners and dining Religious aspects Christianity.

Classification: LCC BR115.N87 C63 2017 | DDC 248.4/6 dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025414

ISBN 978-1-4964-2753-3 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4964-1421-2 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-4964-2754-0 (Apple)

Build: 2021-04-21 15:56:07 EPUB 3.0

Heartfelt thanks to You, sweet Lord, for creating us with the need to eat. Thank You for designing our bodies with the need for constant nourishment every day, so that we might be drawn into regular rhythms of delight for the multitude of delectable ways You satisfy our hunger.

Thank You for the friendships You knew those rhythms would create, pulling us into a vibrant dance of worship together for the bounty of Your grace.

Deep gratitude to Joy, who used her skill to help me make this book come to life.

If the home is a body, the table is the heart, the beating center, the sustainer of life and health.

SHAUNA NIEQUIST

The L ORD of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain;

A banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow,

And refined, aged wine.

ISAIAH 25:6, NASB

All table-talk discussions, love given, and beauty cultivated at our table are for the purpose of making real our Savior and calling those who share life with us to serve Him their whole lives.

C ANDLES FLICKERED with the brush of the evening breeze floating through our Colorado deck, awash with the fragrances of geraniums and roses. It was a beautiful evening, and our table was beautiful as well. Multiple shades of green lettuce in our salad bowl provided a lovely backdrop for the dark-rose cranberries, salted and roasted mahogany pecans, stark-white goat cheese, pungent red onions, and chartreuse chunks of avocado sprinkled here and there. Twice-baked potatoes stuffed full with spinach and bacon adorned each plate next to sizzling chicken, hot from the grill. Crisp homemade whole-grain rolls shone with their glaze of butter. Sparkling cider bubbled in the cut-glass wineglasses.

The stage was set for the occasion of having all my young-adult children home together to celebrate my sixtieth birthday. And as is usual for us, we did our celebrating with a feast.

The excitement of being together once again spilled over into smiles and laughter, rousing conversation, and even tears as we celebrated, once again, what it meant to be us.

My firstborn, Sarah, was home after a summer as a teacher/counselor at an apologetics seminar at a Colorado mountain retreat center.

Joel, her musician/writer brother, was living in Los Angeles, trying to establish a career as a composer of film scores.

Nathan, our outside the box boy, was also in LA, working as an actor in TV and commercials and taking his first steps toward becoming a filmmaker.

And Joy, our cherished caboose, had just finished her freshman year at Biola University.

Clay, my husband, was there, too, of course my beloved longtime partner in ministry, in business, in creating and nurturing a family. And beside him was our beloved, ever-present golden retriever, Kelsey, hoping for a few crumbs from our table.

This is what I think of when I think of home. Sarah smiled as she looked around at the bounty of treasured faces and favorite foods. The others nodded. And I couldnt stop smiling as we sat down once more around the table that had always been such a source of life to all of us.

It happened again just last summer. Days before converging on our home for a family gathering together, both of my boys called me.

Mama, I can hardly wait to get there.

What is your favorite expectation about coming home? I asked each of them.

Both answered with almost the same words, even though they were now separated by two thousand miles!

It is the feasting every night around the table with delicious home-cooked food, being each others best friends, talking about every possible subject and sharing in each others lives, needs, stories, and fun that is my favorite part. I need my people. I want a place to belong. I miss playing with my pack. (Since choosing our first golden retriever puppy years ago and watching her frolic with her little dog family, we have often referred to our own family as our pack.)

Its no accident that they feel this way. Creating a lifegiving table in our home was a priority for Clay and me from the very beginning, and we both put effort and intention into making it happen. Actually, when I think of it, I was doing it even before I had a family.