We Gave Away Our Dinner Table

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I’m Doug Apple...and my heart is on fire!  (Luke 24:32)

We gave away our dinner table.

My wife and I raised our four children around that table.  We had thousands of meals and conversations at that table.  I think our close family dynamic today has a foundation in all those family dinners.

But it didn’t start that way.  There was a time when we were not having family dinners.  I was working each evening until 6, and when I came home, the kids had already eaten.  The family was a bit more scattered and I don’t think we even thought about it.

Then I went to a big Promise Keepers conference in Indianapolis.  Yes, there were great speakers, but the most dynamic thing for me happened during the singing.  

There I was, singing along with thousands of men who filled the stadium, praising the Lord, and all of a sudden a phrase popped into my head, out of the blue.  It just said, “Start having family dinners.”

I actually kind of shook it off and kept singing, but then it came on stronger, so I stopped singing, sat down and wrote it down, “Start having family dinners.”

One thing about this is that it would actually put a greater burden on my wife than me, so I brought it up to her with a little humility.  “I think God wants us to start having family dinners.”

“No problem,” she said.  “I’ll just start giving the kids a snack after school, then we can all eat together when you get home from work.”

And what a blessing it was!  It became a great, daily gathering time, our family coming together to talk and share and interact, and to build and grow our relationships with one another, relationships that are still strong today.

Relationships that were forged around the family dinner table.

I believe that God leads us in three main ways.  We have the Bible, of course, and I believe we should all be prolific hearers and doers of the Word.

And we have the body of Christ, our fellow believers, our teachers and preachers and brothers and sisters, and God can speak to us through them.

And we have the Spirit of God inside all believers, who gives us the more specific directions we need, sometimes very specific directions like, “Start having family dinners.”

And now we’ve given away our family dinner table.  We gave it to our daughter and her husband, and I just hope and pray that they and their four children will be as blessed as we were, as God binds their family together in love and joy and commitment to one another for decades to come.

May God bless you today.

I’m Doug Apple.