OPEN UP YOUR TABLE

I’ve been pondering a lot lately about the dinner table. Swimming through scriptures about how it’s used, what events took place, or doctrines taught while sitting at the table. Reading and learning about others and how they traditionally use their dinner tables and the fruits that come from an established place of rest.

It’s fascinating.

What fascinates me the most is the power it has in my own home. When there is disobedience, disrespect, or even unruliness that shows up in my children it can always be traced back to a dinner table that has fallen out of order. Almost every time.

The minute we re-establish order, the door opens for problems to be addressed and fixed. Hearts soften, the time spent with each other and the entire process feels sacred. We become in sync and each of us is reminded of our role and stewardship and it carries over into daily life.

The Savior himself used it as a place of peace, a place of instruction, a place of discipleship, a place of hospitality, and a place of cultural transformation. And that’s exactly what it is—the single greatest discipleship opportunity for ministering to others as well as training your children, and it happens at the table.

Can you imagine how much healing could come for families that used the table as the Savior did? Could you imagine the impact of opening your table up to those that are suffering, not only using your dinner table to invite, love, and share, but using it as a place that witnesses and establishes the supremacy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, over the thoughts and feelings of man? That’s what order does—it bears testimony.

I’ve witnessed what happens when the table is used in a correct manner and the incredible amount of good it does in my home, in my own family, and in my children. I’m excited to be able to open my table up for others to come to feel that love, peace, and order. For hearts, including mine, to be changed; humbled, softened, and healed.

I absolutely bear testimony that through the love of our Savior, following his example of the table, and through our talking of Christ, rejoicing in Christ, preaching of Christ (2 Nephi 25), we will reach the hearts of our children and our children’s children. The dinner table is about how broken families old or new can be healed and strengthened, and how souls can be saved.