Sunday morning, and there is a burn mark on the table where somebody set a pan down in about 1996, long before this table was theirs.
Grady is making waffles badly. Nyah is nine and has opinions about the ratio of syrup to waffle. Bo is six and has syrup on both hands up to the wrist, which is why, when they do the thing they do, Bo does not get a hand. Bo gets a wrist. Nyah has been holding her brother's wrist on Sunday mornings for most of her life and has never once complained about it.
The chair on Grady's side wobbles. He has been meaning to shim it for two years.
They hold on around the table and each of them says one thing.
Bo prays for the dog, and then for a boy at school called Isaac who cried on Wednesday, and Bo does not explain why Isaac cried, which is a kindness Grady did not teach him.
Nyah prays properly. She takes her time. There is a pause in the middle of hers where she is thinking and not performing, and it lands on Grady the way things land on a parent, sideways, when he is not braced for it.
Then Grady prays. Out loud, in his own voice, badly, over cooling waffles.
This is the fourth year.
He knows it is four because it started on a particular weekend, and what happened that weekend is his and it is not mine to hand around, and it is honestly not the point here. He did not stop. He has not missed a Sunday at that table in four years, and there have been mornings when he was so tired he could barely get the words in order and he got them in order anyway.
What he does not have is anywhere to take them.
Last Tuesday, in the car, at the light by the tire shop, Nyah asked him from the back seat, "Where do people who believe in God go?"
And Grady said, "Different places, sweetheart," and asked her about the science project, and she let him get away with it, which was worse.
So this Sunday, after the amen, with Bo already off the chair and halfway to the dog, Nyah stays where she is with her chin down and her hands still on the table.
And she says, not upset, just genuinely asking, "Is this church?"
Grady looks at his daughter across a burn mark from 1996.
"I don't know, sweetheart."
He has been carrying that sentence around all week like a stone in a coat pocket.
Who has been sitting at that table
I am going to tell you what I am not doing, first, because plenty has already been handed to you by people who did not know your situation.
I am not going to tell you to go back somewhere. I do not know what happened, I have not asked, and you do not owe me the story. Nor will I tell you to stay out here, or hand you a line about how buildings do not matter, because that is a verdict too and it is one people reach for when they want the ache to stop being a problem. Your ache is not a problem. It is a hunger, and hunger is a sign of a working body.
What I am going to do is tell you Who has been at that table, and I can do that with no hedging at all.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.Matthew 18:20
Read where He says it, because it changes everything about how that sentence feels.
He is not talking about a cozy small meeting. He says it in the middle of the hardest paragraph in the Gospels about what to do when something has gone badly wrong between two of His own. Broken relationship. Somebody in the wrong. Attempts that fail. It is the least sentimental context imaginable, and right there, right in the wreckage, He says two or three, My name, and I am there.
That promise was built for hard ground. It has always been built for hard ground.
And it lands on your kitchen. You have not been raising those children alone at that table for four years, and I am not saying that to be kind. Jesus put His own presence in writing in Matthew 18:20 wherever His name is what people are gathering on, and that line was kept for two thousand years by His Spirit, the same Spirit who has been in that room every Sunday you got the words out badly over cooling waffles. He was not waiting somewhere else for you to arrive.
Now let me say the harder half, because I promised you no verdict and I meant it.
That verse is not a permission slip and it is not a sentence. It does not tell you to stay put and it does not tell you to move. It tells you Who is present, and it leaves the rest of your life where it actually belongs, which is between you and Him, with your own knowledge of your own situation, which I do not have.
I will not do to you what has already been done to you, which is to have somebody at a distance decide something about your family.
Here is what I can say about your children, and I want you to sit still for it.
They are not being deprived. What is forming them is not a program, and it never was. They are watching a grown man pray out loud, badly, when nothing is making him, on the fourth year of nowhere to go. That is catechism. That is the whole thing happening in front of them at eye level, once a week, with syrup on it.
You have given them something you cannot see the size of. His word says a child trained in the way he should go carries it, and the actual work in them is being done by His Spirit, at that table, while you sit there feeling like a man running a poor imitation of something.
And nobody here is going to tell you that four years outside means you failed your kids, because that is not what happened and it was never true. A man who failed his kids does not shim his Sunday morning into place for four years running. You have been faithful in the exact conditions you were actually in, which is the only kind of faithfulness there is.
The ache stays. I will not pretend it away.
You want somewhere to take them. That is a good want. It is not weakness and it is not disloyalty to the four years and it is not something to be talked out of, and I will not hand you a timeline for it or tell you what it looks like, because a man at a distance who names your next move is guessing.
What I will tell you is that the wanting and the having are not the same thing as being out or in. You are His, at that table, this morning, with syrup on the wrist of a six-year-old. That is settled in Scripture, not in an address book, and the Spirit who settled it is not confused about where you have been on Sunday mornings.
You do not have to solve anything this morning.
You do not have to know what to call your kitchen, and you do not have to answer Nyah's question, and if the honest answer is still I don't know, sweetheart, then that is an honest answer and your daughter can hold it.
Here is what you can do, and it is small on purpose.
Pray out loud, once, in whatever room your feet are in.
Not the good room. Not after a tidy up. Not after working out where you stand. The room with the wobbly chair in it, the room with the burn mark, the room where the dishwasher is halfway through its cycle.
Because the promise is not attached to a room. It is attached to His name, and His name is exactly as available in a kitchen at nine in the morning as it has ever been anywhere.
And when you say it, understand what is happening in that room. He is not being invited in from outside. He is being spoken to where He already is.
You have had Him in the midst of that kitchen for four years, over the burn mark and the wobbly chair, and you were never running a poor imitation of anything. That is Matthew 18:20 and not my encouragement, and His Spirit has been holding that promise open over your table every Sunday you got the words out badly.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in that room, at ordinary volume. None of it depends on settling where you go next. What you have is yours in Christ, given to you before any of this started, and Scripture is what it rests on while His Spirit holds it steady in that kitchen. Say them plainly, and leave the outcome with Him, because the outcome is His and He answers as He sees fit.
- Four years at a table with nowhere to take them, you are not an empty room and you never were. In the name of Jesus I name you what Scripture names you, two or three gathered on His name, and He said plainly that He is in the midst of it.
- Fear that I am cheating my own kids, you have been talking in my ear on the drive home since the first Sunday, and I am not renting you the seat any longer. His word says Christ is in the midst wherever His name is what people gather on, and His Spirit has been forming those children at that table on every morning I felt like a fraud.
- Lord Jesus, You have been at this table for four years and I did not have a word for what to call it. Your Spirit has been teaching my children in front of me and Your word puts You in the midst of us, so I am praying out loud in this room today, with them, and leaving the rest of it with You.
Matthew 18:20
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