When The Chair Is Too High...

A few years ago I remember going out to eat with a group of people.  We all gathered around the table and took our seats.  I was in my mobility scooter.  We had been walking as a group and touring the place we were visiting.  I wheeled on in  and found that the only tables available were ones that were really high with bar stools. I got as close to the table as I could in my scooter chair, but the reality was that it was difficult for me to get up to the table and climb in to the high chairs.  I finished the meal together with my friends from the lower seat of my scooter chair trying to not let the sting of it all get to me.  Moments like these of inaccessibility are hard to process sometimes.  As I work through the frustration of times like these the silver lining in it all is that the Lord often uses these moments to teach me...and maybe you as you read this?!

On a spiritual level,  the above scene of the chair being too high for me makes me think of how often we as Christians make the seats around God's Family Table too high.  We know and sing songs about  His invitation being "Come As You Are," but often times our expectations and human made standards make the Table invitation seem exclusive.  We make it a table that is only accessible to those who are clean, shiny, and surely those who never struggle with addictions, marriages or anything else!  My heart hurts and sees the religiosity of my own heart when I think about this!  I/we in God's Family often get away from His heart that says, "Come, even in your mess and your struggle. Come in your brokenness.  Come like a cripple to the table and lean on Me." It is when we come with all of our stuff exposed, nothing hidden that He begins to transform it into a beautiful thing and heals us! He makes us worthy to sit there! We can't earn the higher place or our own sense of dignity, but He paid it all and just invites us to come.  There are no levels that are higher....all chair heights are the same!  We all come broken, sinful people invited to a Family Table that never shames us when we come, but invites us to wholeness, grace and forgiveness as we encounter the Holy One who loves us.  His table and chairs are accessible to all...not too high, not too low.  He meets us where we are and loves us into becoming all that He wants for us as His children.

So dear ones, ask Him for a heart like His.  Ask Him for a heart that doesn't shut people out for not meeting the standard or moving forward enough.  Ask Him for His heart of invitation that sets a table making sure that it is accessible and does not limit, yet always always calls us to transformation from where we are.  His chairs are never too high!