This daily post is designed to help you live into our New Room Society covenant of practicing daily prayer together. Below is this week’s theme and daily practice.
Week 2: Tables
Why is this called the “Tables Project” again? And why is communion such a critical part of your spiritual formation and the planting of a new faith community?
“Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart…” Acts 2:46-47, New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Who will eat this bread?
It’s an interesting photo, all these loaves waiting in their cabinet. Do you wonder what country this is? Think about all the different people who will be sustained — for a bit — with this simple food. Some will be depressed, others jubilant, still others in a rush, or bored, or hopeful. Some will be suffering with mental disorders, some will be famous, or poor, or newly married, or imprisoned. Some will be intensely grateful to assuage their hunger; others will not give the bread or it’s origins a thought.
These are the people to whom you are called. These are God’s people, all of them.
When God shares this holy meal of bread and wine with you, you are changed in both substance and soul. And you will help others be changed — renewed, filled, nourished — in the same way.
This is called The Tables Project because the foremost and most powerful work of the Kingdom happens at the table. The communion table, the kitchen table, the coffee table. All the tables of the world where God’s people are welcomed, loved, fed, and formed.
Sunday: 5 Minutes and Waiting
With only four simple ingredients (water, flour, yeast, salt), bread is quite simple to make. But it isn’t truly “fast” food, although this recipe promises artisan loaves in just 5 minutes:
http://leitesculinaria.com/93789/recipes-5-minute-artisan-bread.html
The truth is, there’s more time actually needed. You have to wait 2 hours for the dough to rise. And of course, a few minutes for kneading, and the second wait of 40 minutes or so for it to rise again. And about 30 minutes for baking as well.
Roughly, bread is 10 minutes of work, and 3 hours of waiting.
How is that like — or unlike — your ministry work? Your spiritual formation?