PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 268: It’s Time to Elevate the Table, Part 1
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 268: It’s Time to Elevate the Table, Part 1
Do you know where tables originated? My husband Colin and I talk about the power of the table in raising your children. Your children will rise to the value you put upon your table. How you portray the table will determine the behavior of your children.
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to the Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello, everyone! Today my husband is back with me. We’re going to continue our series, “Elevating the Home and Family.” We have talked in a few other podcasts in between as I have had guests staying with me, but we’re back on this one today. We’re going to talk about elevating the table.
The table, I believe, is a very important piece of furniture in our homes. I think it is something we do need to elevate, to lift up to a higher place. We can often take the table in our kitchen or dining room for granted. We don’t see its full purpose. I think that is so important.
Well, let’s begin talking about tables. I think we should first know where they originated. Do you know where they originated? I wonder . . .
Do you think you’ve got the right answer? Maybe you’re saying, “Well, in the Bible!”
That’s true. We read about tables way back in Exodus. In fact, in Exodus 25:23 we read where God said to Moses, “Thou shalt also make a table of shittim wood.” That was the table of showbread. That is the very first time the word “table” is mentioned in the Bible. I’m sure they had tables before then to eat their meals because they’d been eating for a long time before this Scripture came.
This is the first time we actually read about a table, but this is not where they originated. It originated somewhere far back from even the Bible. Maybe I’ll have to tell you . . .
Tables originated in heaven! God thought of tables before we ever thought of them, before we ever had them on earth. They were in God’s heavenly kingdom. We know this because we can read about them.
I’ll just read you one or two Scriptures. Go over to the New Testament. Luke 14:15: “And when one of them that sat at meat,” that means ‘sat at the table,’ “with Him heard these things, He said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.”
We go to Matthew 8:11, and Jesus is speaking. He says: “I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.” When it says: “sit down,” it means ‘sit at the table.’
Again, we go over to Luke 22:30. We read where Jesus is talking to his disciples. He said: “That ye may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom.” Jesus was talking about His kingdom in heaven, His heavenly kingdom, and He said: “One day, I’m going to have you sitting around the table and we will talk together. Not just here on earth but in My heavenly kingdom.”
So, precious ladies, I want you to get a vision. Tables are heavenly. God has tables in His kingdom. They’re part of His kingdom. We need to lift up our eyes and see our table in a greater way than we do. Not just thinking of it as somewhere we plonk some stuff or poke a bit of food on. Everybody just eats and then runs. No, the table is very, very important.
Colin: Can I say something on this point?
Nancy: Yes, Darling, yes! You are with me! You speak!
Colin: I do think that it’s so easy these days for people to change their ways, so much so that the table is hardly even used. Some homes don’t even have a table. People just come in and go to the refrigerator and grab whatever they need and rush off to do whatever they’re doing in their bedroom, or wherever they might be sitting, with their computers and so on.
They lack the blessedness of a table, of getting around the table with your family. Everything is getting lost. I don’t think that’s to our good, that it’s getting lost. I think it’s to the detriment of family life and the way God intended it to be for fellowship. How can you have fellowship if you’re not sitting around the table? In that sense, the richness of being at the table.
Nancy: Oh, yes! Also, another Scripture about the heavenly table. We go to Revelation, of course. What does it say there? It talks about the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19:9: “Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
You can’t have a great feast . . . this is talking about a great feast . . . it will be the greatest feast of all feasts that has ever been prepared. There have been weddings where people love to make a great feast. Some are more lavish than others, but this will be the most lavish feast that has ever been in the history of this world. We won’t just hang around. We’ll be sitting at tables, because we know, as we read through the Word of God, that God always talks about sitting to eat.
To sit down to eat is a very important thing to understand. We’re not meant to eat on the run! Or just eat as we’re continuing our housework or eat as we’re running out the door to get somewhere. No, God intends us to sit down to eat. Science also proves that you get far more from your food if you sit down and take time to eat. That’s a hard thing in this rushed world, this busy world. But it’s a habit we need to get into.
In fact, if you would check out, and you can go to each of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Everyone tells the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. Everyone tells this little bit. It says: “Jesus commanded His disciples to command the people to sit down.”
Jesus did not break the bread and thank His Father, and give them this bread, and feed this multitude until everyone was sitting down. There were five thousand men, plus women and children. That was a big company. I think that would have been quite a task for the disciples. That’s why Jesus said: “I’m commanding you to do this.” Then He said, “And you command the people that they sit down.” It was a command. We read that in all the gospels.
Colin: Can I say something on that point? Because some people have such resistance to that kind of authority. When leadership, even in churches say, “Can we please stand?” they don’t want to stand. “I’ll stand if I feel like it.” Or “Can we now sit down?” People say, “I don’t know whether I want to sit down.”
But God really knows what’s good for us. We’re more relaxed when we’re sitting down. I think it’s better for our health, as you were saying. It’s scientifically proven that it’s much, much better for our health to assimilate food when we’re resting and sitting down.
Nancy: And first, that which is natural, then that which is spiritual. It is the same. We might eat a bit of food, but we’re really not gaining all the nutrients unless we sit. Food is not just to feed our body. Food is always likened together with fellowship. We’re meant to fellowship as we are eating.
But it’s the same in the spiritual. When we read about Mary, do you remember when the Bible says that “Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His words.” She wasn’t just passing by. “Oh, I wonder what Jesus was saying there,” and grabbed a little bit. No, she sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His words. She really got something.
That’s true, even in our own Bible reading where we’re feeding our souls. It’s the same thing. Sometimes we’re so in a hurry. “Oh, I have to read my Bible!” Grab a couple of verses. Sometimes, because of circumstances, that’s all we can get. I know, lovely mothers who are listening, oh, when you’ve got all your little darlings around you, and they’re all needing you at once, this is a season where you don’t have that same time to just sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to His words.
I know. That was my own experience. Before I was married, I had given my life to seek the Lord. I used to spend about three hours each day, in the morning, waiting on the Lord, in the Word, and in prayer, before I went out to work. I was teaching at the time.
But then I got married, and my first baby came along. Seventeen months later, two babies came along! I had twins unexpectedly. And suddenly, I had three babies in seventeen months! Do you think I had time to get up and spend three hours waiting on the Lord? I did not! And I wondered what had happened to me! “Help! I can’t do this like I used to!”
I had to put my Bible on the windowsill where I was preparing food or doing the dishes. I could just get little snippets. I’d put it at Proverbs, where you can get one verse, and you can take it to your heart. Or at the Psalms. I had a Bible in the bathroom, or where I was nursing the babies. But that was a season of being able to get what I could just in those little moments. God understands these seasons. But when you do have more time to really hear the Lord you do need to be sitting at His feet.
Talking about elevating the table, I believe we need to make the table a very, very important place in our homes because it is a heavenly piece of furniture.
Then we read the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus told them how to pray. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.”
We go over to the account in Luke, where Jesus was telling them how they should pray. Luke 11:2: “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done. As in heaven, so in earth.” It says it a little more simply there: “As in heaven, so in earth.” OK, if God has tables in heaven, well, we also have them on earth. But let’s see them as a heavenly piece of furniture. Let’s elevate them to where God has elevated them.
I do believe the value that we set upon the table is how our children will see it. If it’s time for supper and we’ve cooked something and we just put it down on the table, maybe a naked table (I call a table that doesn’t have a tablecloth, I call it “a naked table.”) People say, “Oh, goodness me! How do you expect me to put a tablecloth on? Help! I’ve got enough work to do!”
Well, you don’t even have to put a cloth tablecloth on your table when you have little children. You’ll be able to do that when they get older. There are seasons in life. But you can put a plastic tablecloth on. Today you can buy beautiful plastic tablecloths that look real. They look like a real tablecloth. It does something.
During the day, you’ve maybe had a naked table, or it’s a table filled with books about homeschooling. In the day, I usually have a runner on my table, and a vase of flowers, or something like that. I love something on the table. But when it comes to suppertime, we take that off, and we put on a tablecloth, because it is now mealtime.
I want every meal to be special. If we don’t make it special, our children won’t find it special. They’ll just come, eat, and run. But if you make it special, we put a tablecloth on (I will, in my transcript, I will give you a link where you can buy these lovely, checkered tablecloths. They’re just plastic, but they look so real). All you do is wipe them down. You’ve got to wipe down your naked table anyway. So, why not make that little extra, to make it beautiful?
You can put a candle if you want to. You don’t have to do that every time, but every now and then. Of course, as your children are getting a little older, even four and five-year-olds can learn to set a table correctly. You show them how to set the table. They love to do it. And you inspire them how to make it beautiful and special.
You can get them to go outside and see what they can find. Maybe there are some wildflowers that they can find, and they can bring them in, and put them in a little vase. I think you say, “vase,” but Down Under we say “v-ah-se.” They can do that. Or maybe there’s something special. They find a very interesting piece of rock or something, and they bring it in, and put it on the table. Just in the middle, something to talk about when you’re at the table. But to make it special.
And then, even once a week, do something more special. You can even write little place names for your children. I often did this throughout the years. I would take time to think about it, because I wouldn’t only write their names. I would write something to go with it. OK, so say their name is “Barry.” Underneath that, I would put, “Bold for God.” Something starting with the same letter as their name. Just inspiring them.
Or sometimes I would spend more time and write a little rhyming couplet about them. Sometimes I’d do four lines. I’d put it there on their plate, and it would be something special for them, something that they realized they are special. You will find, when you make your table special, you make it look lovely, you will find that the children’s behavior changes. They will rise to the value you put on your table!
Colin: It takes me back to Palmerston North New Zealand.
Nancy: Yes, mainly where we were raising our children.
Colin: We were raising our young children there. I was pastoring a church and we were invited out. I think you came with me on this particular day. We went out to visit these people who were fairly new to the church. They’d just come from a historical church. They were university graduates. They were very well . . . they had brilliant minds, but they had a real dedication to God. They had been involved strongly in an Anglican, which is an Episcopalian church.
They showed us through their home. It was so interesting to see. They had twelve children, I think, ranging right down from teenagers to little babies. They took us into the living room where they had the table where they all sat down. The father had taken the initiative, I think, to make the whole room feel like a church. They had church windows in (I guess because they came from historical backgrounds). They had these church windows, but on the table, it was a big table to sit everybody down.
They had what we called Down Under “pokerwork,” because you put a steel poker into the fire, and you heat it up. You heat the poker, and then you poke the fire with it, of course. It’s a piece of steel, long steel. Then you heat it up and you could write in the wood.
Nancy: What do you call that here in America? Poker?
Colin: Writing in the wood, they wrote all these verses of Scripture, wonderful verses, all over the table. The children couldn’t even sit down at the table without observing Scriptures around where they sat. I thought it was very thoughtful of them.
They were raising these children for God, and they were using the table as a way of getting the Word of God through to them. No wonder the Scripture says: “You write it on your walls, you write it above your doorposts, and you write the Scriptures down.” The table is a good place to write it.
Nancy: Actually, it was when I met that family, that was when I started baking our own homemade bread. In fact, I think I had done a bit of bread baking before then. But this beautiful mother said something to me, and I took hold of it. She said, “Nancy, I noticed a difference in the health of all my children, not when I started baking bread, but when I stared grinding the wheat, and baking the bread from the freshly ground wheat.” I thought, “Wow! That’s a pretty good testimony, so I think I’m going to do it!”
Well, back in those days, you just couldn’t go and buy a grinder like you can today. Just get on the internet, and you can get a wonderful grinder, a Wonder Mill, you can have on your counter. I have one now. It sits on my counter every day. I never take it off because I’m always using it.
But back then, there were none of those lovely little grinders. I had to search and search. Then I found this farmer. He had this great big contraption that was about as high as this roof! He used it for grinding food for his pigs. I said, “Hey, can I come out every two weeks and grind my grain for my bread, and use your machine?”
“Yes, yes, you can do that.” So, I wasn’t doing it every time, but at least every two weeks I went out and ground my grain for my bread. Then you found an old . . .
Colin: I found an old commercial coffee grinder. I used that for a long time.
Nancy: And then eventually we got this wonderful stone-ground grinder. That was amazing, wasn’t it? Then, of course, we traveled to Australia and lived there for ten years and came here. Now, of course, I use these WonderMills. They’re great. But that was when I first started baking my bread, meeting that wonderful family.
Colin: Obviously, they had seen the importance of being around the table. In fact, back in those days, everybody sat around the table. There was not a home where there wasn’t a kitchen table. People used to use them. They did use them at least three times a day. I don’t know why we have drifted.
Nancy: Well, I think a lot of this happened when TV came in. People began to sit around the TV, and they began to forget about the kitchen table, or the dining room table. But I think that we have to get a vision to see what it really is. I see the table as a place where we not only feed our children food. That’s how we mostly think. “Oh, I’ve got to feed the family and sit down at the table.”
No. The table is not just to feed the food for their bodies. It is a place to feed the body, the soul, and the spirit. Now lovely ladies, if you can get ahold of that, it will change your whole life. It will change your family life. It will give you a vision beyond what you had before, because you’re not only going to cook a meal. This is the beginning, of course. You are going to feed their bodies.
Also, we need to get a vision for that where you’re not going to feed them any old thing. I believe that mothers have a responsibility to research and to know what is the best food, and the healthiest and most wholesome food to feed their families. We have a responsibility. God gave us these children and we can’t put down their throats all this junk, and chemicals, and devitalized food that’s around today.
When you go to the supermarket, what aisles do you walk down? I don’t even walk down an aisle where they have all those packages. I don’t even walk down an aisle where they have all those tins of stuff. No, I go to where they have the produce, and maybe one or two other things, and that’s it. I don’t live on any devitalized packaged junk! That’s not what we’re meant to feed our families. We’ve got to get back to how God wants to feed our families.
Colin: It’s pretty hard to change once you’ve fed them the “junk,” [laughter] as you say.
Nancy: Oh, yes, maybe that’s true. Have I really? I don’t think I’ve really managed yet to get your thinking onto my thinking towards food. [laughter]
Colin: Well, you have, generally speaking, especially when I’m home. But it is hard to get children back if they’ve been used to Chuckie Cheese, and McDonald’s, and everything.
Nancy: But actually, you didn’t get brought up on fast food. But back then it was normal. Everybody baked with white flour and white sugar. Everything was filled with that.
Colin: And brown rice. We were brought up on white rice. But now we have discovered the importance of brown rice. But it’s hard for people to change. Especially for children. Children will resist like anything, so we have to be very careful about, right from the beginning, starting them on very healthy food at the table.
Nancy: I often see mothers giving their children all this junk! And all these little packaged junk in these little, wee fast-food snack things that they can buy. Children are living on them. I say to the mother, “Why are you giving them this?” “Oh, well, that’s what they love!”
But if you had never bought it and you didn’t ever have it in your house, they wouldn’t even know it existed! Mothers are responsible. You don’t have to buy the junk, and your children will eat what’s in your house, or what you give them.
Colin: They develop that desire. Their taste buds go to what they’ve been brought up on.
Nancy: That’s so true. Yes, Yes. Anyway, you are going to feed them a wholesome meal. It does take time. I find to prepare a meal takes time and thought, because I want to prepare a meal that’s nutritious, but also looks nice, and is something that people are going to want to eat. It has wonderful flavors and aromas. That’s why I love to cook with lots of spices. In our home, we like a lot of hot food, spicy food, because we don’t like bland food very much. Some people like bland food.
So, we’re preparing wholesome food, but that is only the beginning. We also have to feed their souls. We have to begin to engage our children in discussion, heart-to-heart fellowship, and talking with them. If you come to a table . . . now this is what I have found, ladies. I have found that if I come to the table . . . I’ve been preparing the food, and we sit down, and I haven’t thought of a question, or I haven’t thought of a subject to bring to the table that we can discuss, I often find the conversation goes nowhere. Nobody really says anything.
Colin: It usually goes very negative.
Nancy: It goes negative.
Colin: Argumentative. Children quarrel and fight.
Nancy: The table can be bedlam. It is true, also, that you’re training at the table. But there is something wonderful about bringing something to the table to discuss. A question, like if you have little wee children, you can ask a question like, “Now children, what was the best thing you did today?” And you get each one of your little children to talk about it. They also want to hear from Mommy and Daddy. We have to tell them what was the best thing that we did today.
Or you could say, “What was the funniest thing?” You’re teaching them to learn how to engage in conversation at the table instead of just going nowhere with it. Or, as they get older, you’re going to bring a subject to the table to discuss, or another question that will really get them thinking.
I actually do have a list of questions that often, when my brain goes blank, and I can’t think, I will refer to it. I do have it on my webpage, under The Family Table. You can check it out there. But here are just one or two of some of the questions we would ask our children. This is one. We used this question quite often because they loved it. “If you were given a million dollars, how would you spend it?” Oh, they loved to talk about that!
Here’s another one: “If you had all the money in the world, and you could travel to any country you like, which one would you choose, and why?” Those are just fun discussions. But then you can ask more political questions. We’re a pretty political family. Or you can ask Bible questions about a Scripture. Perhaps, “Children, Romans 3:4 says: “Let God be true and every man a liar.” What do you think that means?”
You will go round each person, making sure each person gets to share. Sometimes at the beginning they may not know what to say, but they’re going to learn how to think, and how to speak out what they feel, and what they understand. You can do that with any Scripture. You can bring it and ask them what they feel it means.
Oh, a good one too, especially for homeschoolers, is, “OK, children, I want each one of you tonight to tell us something new you have learned today.” That’s a good question. It’s a good question also for Mom and Dad, because we also have to have our say. We also should be learning something new every day.
As they’re homeschooling, if they come to the table, and “OK, what’s new? What did you learn that’s new today?” If nobody has anything to say, well, what were you doing? Sometimes we can spend our days making our children get through all their curriculums, and making sure they finish them. At the end of them, they haven’t even learned anything! Sometimes it’s better to learn one thing than trying to read a whole lot of stuff you’re never going to remember! That’s a good one. That checks out how you’re going with your homeschooling.
Colin: Here’s another good question to ask. I don’t know whether we did, but I was thinking of a family down in Australia that we knew who were very good servants. They would go to help people a lot. They would take their children to help. There was one older lady there. Anyway, this lady was in great need. She was a very frail person. They used to help her. But the good question would be, “Who did you help today?”
Nancy: Yes, that’s a good one, a very good one. It may have even been their brother or their sister who needed help. Sometimes they may not bother with that. But that is important. It doesn’t always have to be someone outside the home. It can be someone inside the home. Yes, that’s a good question. But you can find many more if you go to the website.
FACE TO FACE TABLE FELLOWSHIP
But we do need to remember that the table is face-to-face table fellowship. That’s why we sit around a table. Many, many families are often caught up with sports. Sadly, I think it’s a ploy of the enemy that so many sports practices and things like this are often at that time when usually mothers should be home preparing the meal. Sadly, they’re all out in the car.
Then there’s hardly time to get home to prepare the meal. “OK, just let’s grab something on the way home.” So, children are eating, looking at the head or the neck of someone in front of them in the car. That is not how we’re meant to eat. We are meant to eat facing one another. Face-to-face table fellowship. Even God loves face-to-face.
We were reading this morning in our family devotions in Exodus 33:11: “And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.”
I think of John, the apostle John, and how he was thinking of many of his dear friends, dear saints, and how he longed to be with them.
2 John 1:12: “Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full.” He was writing there to the elect lady.
Then over in 3 John, he was writing to the well-beloved Gaius. 3 John 1:14: “But I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face.”
FOOD AND FELLOWSHIP ARE TWINS
There is something powerful about face-to-face fellowship, and food and fellowship are twins. They go together. As we are coming to the end of this session, we’ll have to do another session, because we haven’t even got yet to the whole table, because we’re going to feed the body, feed the soul, feed the spirit. So, next week we will talk about feeding the spirit.
But I want to end with this Scripture in Psalm 128:3. Psalm 127 and Psalm 128 are family psalms. God gives His picture, His plan for the family. Psalm 128:3: “Thy wife is like a fruitful vine within thine home.” Some translations say: (In the heart of thy home). “Thy children, like olive plants, all around your table.”
Isn’t it interesting that this is the picture that God paints, of a family that’s blessed of the Lord. God sees this. All around the table together. They’re not sitting in front of the TV. They’re not, someone’s coming to get their meal, and then someone comes later and gets theirs, having it at different times. No, they’re together.
THE TABLE IS TOGETHERNESS
The table is togetherness. It brings the family together. As we were raising our children, I think I would have to say that this was the most powerful time of raising our children, the family meal table. What would you say, Darling?
Colin: Yes, I do think so, too. I was thinking about this. It’s wonderful for a child to know their place at the table. If they have a place at the table, there’s a sense of belonging. I belong to this family. I belong to this table. We all, somehow or other, in time, graduate to the place that we’ve been allotted. When that person’s missing, we notice that, because we take notice that even King Saul noticed that David was missing at the table. He’d been allotted a place at the table, and he was missing (1 Samuel 20:18, 25).
Nancy: And when he was missing, it was noticed.
Colin: People need to have a sense of belonging. I think it’s sad when people don’t feel they belong in the family. One way of making the family have that feeling of belonging is around the table.
Nancy: Oh, yes. Well, time has gone, again so quickly! But we will talk more again about this in the next podcast. Darling, would you like to pray?
Colin:
“Lord Jesus, we thank You, Lord, for the simplicity of Christianity, and how simple it is, really. And yet, it is divine. The family meal table is something that we need to become more accustomed to, and not take it for granted. We need to see the value of it and see how it can be used to strengthen the family, both physically and spiritually. Probably more important spiritually, but also, to strengthen the family’s ties and relationships and so on. Help us, Lord, to receive this instruction. May it be a blessing to many families. In Jesus’s Name, Amen.”
Nancy: Amen!
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Transcribed by Darlene Norris * This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.