Setting the table

This Sunday, as we continued to observe the time in the church year called Ordinary Time,  my pastor invited those of us who wanted to bring  a dish that was dear to us to set the communion table.  After each person told about their dish and placed it on the table we all said, “We set this ordinary table with extraordinary love.” 

And to make it all the more tender, our deacons served communion from those dishes. 

There was a toothpick holder that had been on my friend’s father-in-law’s simple table for years, the plate from another friend’s grandparents shelves, a plate brought from a childhood in Turkey, and so on.  Each time……setting an ordinary table with extraordinary love.

I brought one of the plates from our dishes we got when we got married and shared how on the day the first place setting  was delivered from Bacon’s (a bygone era), I remember holding the plate and looking long and hard at it and wondering who would be sitting around our table over the years.  I  underestimated!  Wayyy underestimated.  Never saw three kids coming down the pike or community  meals of 20 + friends, or the many new friends who would enter our lives.  We have and do indeed set an ordinary table with extraordinary love.