It’s amazing what you can learn crawling around under a table…..or so I recall. I hadn’t thought of that in years until the other day when I was trying to remove the extender leaf from my dining room table. I hadn’t seen the world from that point of view in a very long time.
Saturday mornings when I was a kid were not necessarily for sleeping in or running with the neighborhood kids. For me it was a time for Sky King, The Lone Ranger and the Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. Mom, however, had a slightly different itinerary for me. She thought it was a time for chores. Oh, well, nice try anyway.
I’m not sure how I inherited the task of dusting the furniture, but that was my job….every Saturday morning. Of course, she did allow the TV to be on as background noise, so I could hear galloping hooves, firing guns and a musical score that let me know something big was happening! Oh, to be able to stop and watch Roy Rogers!
One day in the course of my furniture duties, I crawled under the dining room table to dust the legs of the table and six chairs. Interesting. I found it quite cozy, so I pulled all the chairs in under the table and decided to “reside” there for a while. What a perfect hideaway…. to appear to be doing what I was told, yet all the while watching my Saturday morning shows through a lace tablecloth filter. Mom was occupied in the kitchen and didn’t notice for a time, but then eventually caught on to my shenanigans and put a stop to it.
Strange as it may sound, that little escapade was enough to make me long to hide away under the table again. So my kid sister and I would take a bed sheet or a blanket and drape it over the chairs to create a little tent down there where we played with our dolls, made up stories, colored in our coloring books or whatever our mostly carefree hearts wanted to do that day.
One day, however, while I was in my “kid cave”, company came and stayed….and stayed….and stayed. I hadn’t come out initially, because I was sure they would be gone soon, but the longer they stayed the more embarrassing it would have been to crawl out from under the table. I wasn’t a tiny child anymore….after all, I was probably going on nine. I was getting thirsty. I could use a snack. I need to use the bathroom. Time seemed to drag by and suddenly that cozy little hideaway was feeling more like a prison and I wanted OUT. All I could think was, “How much longer are they gonna stay?” It seemed like an eternity until they headed for the front door and I could make my escape. What happened? My cozy, private den suddenly didn’t seem so inviting.
As crazy as all that sounds, I used to think of that every time I heard the scripture in Matthew where Jesus gave what seemed like a harsh rebuke to a Canaanite woman: “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs”, and her astounding reply, “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” I tried to envision in my childish way what that woman would have felt like trapped under the table like I had been.
There have been times that I felt when I prayed as though I was begging for crumbs….that I was not worthy of the slightest notice of God and, whether I said it or not, felt like, “Lord, if you have any grace left over, can you send it my way?”
Satan has a way of taking advantage of those times when life has you beaten down and makes you feel as though you’re the last person on earth God wants to hear from. The truth is, none of us were meant to live under the table or beneath our privilege as children of God. His word tells us in Hebrews that we are “to come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need”, and in Acts that “God is no respecter of persons”….. what He’s done for others He will do for you and me.
So, don’t be shy….come on out from under the table….and take your place with the children of God.
Janice
