Moving to the "Big Table"

Have you seen the TV commercial that shows the family gathered for Thanksgiving?  The adults are seated in one room around the “big table,” and the children are seated around card tables in an adjacent room.  For one of the children, the long-awaited day finally comes.  He is invited to move from the children’s card table to the “big table.”  It is a move toward manhood, to shaving, driving, and staying up past midnight.  Then back at the children’s table the Thanksgiving dessert offering is being topped with Reddi-wip.  The boy moves back to the children’s table and announces, “I learned something that day. Being an adult is overrated.”

Who among us has not on occasion longed to return to the wonder years of childhood?  Julia, a friend Donna and I knew during our seminary days, remembered those days and spoke of returning to them.  On those rare weekends when she and her husband Bill could make the trip back to their homes, Julia would speak of those places “as the land of plenty where soda pops and candy bars are free.”  Even for those of us who did not grow up in plush surroundings, there was so much that was “free” during our childhoods. 

My childhood was a grand time. I had good shelter and plenty of good food.  Clothes hung in my closet and were stacked in the chest-of-drawers.  I had shoes on my feet and a pair or two to spare.  I had a tricycle; and before I was old enough to drive, I was the proud owner/rider of three bicycles (a small 20-inch with training wheels; a 1957 Western Flyer, for which I would give my eyetooth to have today; and a three-speed English Racer).  Dad even handed me the keys to a new Cushman Silver Eagle motor scooter when I was too young to be licensed to ride it.  I was introduced to books and the joy and wonder of reading.  I was able to participate in extra-curricular activities at school.  I was given the opportunity to attend a private Baptist college.  Though my parents were not rich, my childhood was filled with rich blessings. 

I’m thankful for all that stuff and the books and the education.  (You do understand that books and education are not “stuff,” don’t you?)  I’m thankful for it all.  But do you know what I am most thankful for?  I am most thankful for afternoons sitting at the kitchen table talking to mom about the day at school.  I am most thankful for those days I rode with Dad in his pickup truck, got in his way when he was building houses, and learned from him how to drive a tractor and be useful on the farm.  I am most thankful for those moments when in my parents’ eyes I saw their pleasure in who I was.

Many years later I still have stuff—and books!  I am thankful for a wonderful childhood, but I don’t want to go back.  Being grown up, being at the “big table” is not overrated.  Being at the “big table” means finally being old enough to know that the real blessings come from relationships with people and with the God who grants and sustains life.

I like being a grownup.  I like being a grownup and knowing that in the eyes of God I am still a child.  As God’s child, I’m still learning, still growing.  From this vantage point, I can see the “Big Table.”  I’m watching, knowing that one day in the future, I’ll see the Father nod, and I will be invited to join those already at the “Big Table.” 

Until the nod comes, I’ll gladly stay at the children’s table; but when the nod comes, no amount of Reddi-wip, or real whipped cream like Donna makes, will entice me back.  I give thanks to know I am a child of God.