From the Gates to the Table: A Reflection on Thanksgiving, Posture, and The Prodical Table.

Nov 22

Enter His gates with a song of thanksgiving
And His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, bless and praise His name.

Psalm 100:4.1

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. The food, the company, the weather is (usually) nice, and I always have loved the hustle of the holiday itself. But this year is different I feel different. I want want to hustle my way through another holiday and miss out on something bigger than the day itself. I want to be thankful and carry a grateful heart.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about posture and how I show up to places. When I say posture, I’m not talking about whether my back is slouched, or not, and odds are it might be. I’m taking about presentness and availability. Am I open to give and receive?

I have noticed that the journey to a grateful heart comes in movements and takes time and practice. I’m going to dish-out the movements following.

PRODICALS

First, is the movement that I can’t even start to come to the gate, let alone the table without acknowledging one thing: my position.

If you have read anything I written, been in conversation with me in a small group setting, or know me well, you know one of my favorite stories in scripture is the parable Jesus tells of the prodigal son.2 I won’t retell the whole story, but it’s super important! It highlights a prodigal Father running after his prodical kid. I always knew I was a prodigal, but I never stopped to think that He just might be too. How could God ever be a prodigal?

This week I took some time here. I heard two things from the Lord:

“I chased you. And I broke every barrier, every rule, and paid the pricer them for you because I deeply love you”.
“If I did all this because I love you , how much more will I do to care for you?”

The question at large: If God will “break the rules” and pay the cost because He loves you, how much further would He go to care for you?

The biggest thing that keeps us from not coming to the gates with praise is our inability to come back to the Table. Meaning, I can’t believe that I have anything to be thankful for without believing that I am deeply loved AND cared for. When you are loved you know your safe places, and there’s not a safer place than the Table of Communion. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you have done, if you are hungry and you have thirst, you are invited to the table to eat. There’s a robe, a ring, and some real nice shoes waiting for us at our seat.

As if the gift of the rescue wasn’t enough. This is a generous Father, who wants to give His kids abundant life full of joy, love, peace, freedom, contentment, and purpose right where they are! He gives over-the-top generous to the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the married and the single, the mother and the one who wishes she was one. He’s near to the broken hearted and rejoices with the joyful. There is no cap to his generosity, nor his mercy.

POSTURE

My favorite time of the day is the morning before it gets light out. Don’t get me wrong I sleep through it when it’s needed. But My perfect morning starts at 5:00am. I get up light a candle, turn some string lights on, spend some time in intentional breathing, checkin in on myself, and I come to the Table with Jesus. Then I like to slide my runners on, and go for a walk outside or watch the sunrise on the parkway. In both, I find my sense of whole- self being restored. It’s hard not to be thankful when I have exercised or just spent time in nature. I think we are designed for that.

Posture looks like me showing up with open hands, even when it feels hard or I feel unfit do so. But sometimes for myself it also looks like offering what I have been given. If worship is giving God our full self, then trusting must be giving up to Him the things I care about the most and hold unto the tightest. I think most of the time, I wont receive until I give up these things I have held onto with a death-grip. Surrender isn’t and doesn’t have to be a posture of grief and obligation when it can be a place of freedom and love.

Here’s the kicker: Entering the gate is our responsibility.

It’s on us. For me to enter with a thankful and joyful heart. I have to be consistent show up, even when I don’t feel like it and I need to say thank you anyways. It’s like saying “thanks” to that gift from your relative even though you don’t actually like the gift, but it’s honestly Nice that they got you anything to begin with. If you think about it, that’s exactly what we’re doing! God is giving us a bountiful amount of gifts and treasures that we mistake for ordinary rights, not extraordinary provisions.

So what if we just start there?

PRACTICE

Before I head out the door in the morning, I try to jot down at least three things I am thankful for. They can be super simple like “I slept in this morning”. They can also be things I am believing in faith that haven’t happened yet. Or sometimes I just write “Thank you Jesus, because I know you’re doing something special that I don’t know about yet”.

Sometimes it’s more than three, and sometimes it’s a struggle for me to write more than one. But the truth is I have more than enough to praise for. The greatest part is nothing about it has been anything I have done. They have always been mine, I just had to search for it.

In the story of the Prodigals, The Son that stayed was upset and the Father said something that should change the game for us: “You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours”. This is a true gift that we all have, we just have to tap into it.

…

Pick 3 things. Write them on a sheet of paper, and slide them into your pocket. Look back at them when things start to go haywire.

Pray for them. Praise God for them.

A GREATFUL HEART

Lately, I have loved this album from a worship leader named Kory Miller. His album is called All to Bless You.3 There is one song on his album that I think perfectly orchestrates the kind of posture I hope to arrive at. It’s called “low”.4 It’s so good!

For me a low posture is simply coming to the Table and being swept up in the Conversation of Father, Son, and Advocate. It’s love. it’s celebration. It’s courage in saying “Look at what I have seen!" I can’t believe it!”.

It’s saying “Thank you Father” for the gifts that I either don’t know what to do with yet, or the ones I don’t even really want…right now. All in time. His ways are higher, and trusting He has good plans for me means I have to believe that they are what’s best for me when they make no sense. So I have to be grateful for the crazy “this doesn’t make sense”.

To end, I want to give you a picture. My favorite person I read about in scripture has came to be David.5 A man who is deeply flawed and broken, but outrageously joyful. A king dressed as a priest dancing in the streets of Jerusalem praising a God who he was just angry at. But yet, His arms rejoiced in him and were open to him anyways. All along I’ve gone back to the story of the Prodicals because I believe they tell us something significant about who God is. He’s a Father who is overly joyful, loves without caution ( or some might say in a reckless manner…no hate I love Cory Asbury6), and who is abundantly generous. He’s already at the gate.

And me? I just want to be dancing like David.

Rejoicing when it doesn’t make sense.

So low that the Father is the only one who can find me.

So this thanksgiving hold your list with your arms stretched wide, and show up to the Table ready to feast. Participate in the Community of Love that is eager to give generously and receive you joyfully.

Notes

3.All to Bless You, Kory Miller. Essential Music Publishing LLC. Performed by Kory Miller, Written by Mia Fields, Mitch Wong, And Kory Miller. Produced by Kory Miller & Zach Hartgroves.

4. Low, All to Bless You, Kory Miller. Essential Music Publishing LLC. Performed by Kory Miller, Written by Mia Fields, Mitch Wong, And Kory Miller. Produced by Kory Miller & Zach Hartgroves.

6. This is a reference to musical artist Cory Asbury’s song Reckless Love. Reckless Love, Cory Asbury, Bethel Music. Performed by Cory Asbury. Written by Cory Asbury.

Mallory Garrison

From the Gates to the Table: A Reflection on Thanksgiving, Posture, and The Prodical Table.

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