A Seat At the Table

When I was a kid a read a book called “The empty chair” by Bess Kaplan.  It was a book about a child learning to deal with the death of her mother and the new step mother.  The mom’s chair was now empty and for the daughter it still continued to represent her mother.  As Christians we need an empty chair to remind us that God exists in our lives.  A seat should exist at our table of life that helps us to realize that God is right there with us.  Sometimes because of God’s invisible nature we forget that He exists in our lives.  We forget that when we accept Jesus in to our heart He goes everywhere with us from then on out.  The problem is that we don’t physically see Him so we have a tendency to just go where we want, do what we want and say what we want.  If we stopped to analyze what we were doing and saying, we might realize that some of those things Jesus would not approve of.  The prophet Isaiah reminded the people of Israel of the same concept in Isaiah 40:27 –

“Jacob, why do you say, and Israel, why do you assert: “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my claim is ignored by my God”?”

Israel was acting like God couldn’t see what they were doing.  In truth God was seeing everything and was disgusted.  He gave them multiple prophets and warnings to give them a chance to come around and live godly, but eventually He had to deal with their sin.  He had to give them a physical reminder that He was there and that He did care about their lives and actions.  He brought the enemy down on them as punishment.

Common sense should tell us that the God we believe in knows and sees everything.  We, like Israel, cannot hide our ways from Him.  We need to put a seat at our table to remind us physically that God is here and a part of our lives.  We need to maybe look at that empty seat in the theatre or that empty chair in the living room or that empty guest chair at our desk as the spot where Jesus sits.  Then maybe we would use more common sense and not do things Jesus would not approve of.