sitting at the table or on the floor?

This month our team is working with an organization called Hope to People, doing relational ministry with the Ukrainian people and running a day camp for kids. We have a lot of meetings with new friends, we play with kids from different orphanages, we teach classes on what we believe, we do dramas, we drink tea. This is home.



Everywhere we go, the people want to sit and talk with us to get to know our hearts and hear about our dreams, passions, and lives pre-race. Most of those conversations happen over tea time, which is how I believe most good conversations should happen.



It seems like we don’t go a single day without someone bringing us a jar of jam or warm clothes or anything else we could possibly need. They care for us and worry about us like family when we have been sick. We have been invited on family picnics and into family homes. We have literally been forced to take a nap after a big lunch.  Ukraine to me means hospitality at its finest.



One of the funniest things about this culture is that we are not allowed to sit on the floor. We have been reprimanded more than a few times for having team meetings while sitting in the floor. It makes no sense to them why we would sit on the floor if there are perfectly good chairs in the room.



The Lord just keeps bringing me back to this attitude that Ukrainians have about not sitting on the ground. I think that it could be somewhat of a parallel to our choosing how we meet with God. It seems that sometimes God is offering us this incredible chair to sit in at a banquet table full of food and great teas, but even though it’s there, we still choose to sit on the floor, only smelling the things and hearing the clinking of the dishes of the others that are feasting on the fullness of the presence of God. Yes, the floor is fine. There are good smells and you are still sitting in the fellowship, but it’s not at the table.



I keep thinking, if I sat on the floor at tea time, I wouldn’t be able to reach my tea or grab a tasty cookie from the center of the table. In my spiritual life, i wouldn’t be receiving as much as I could be. But why in our spiritual lives is it so easy to settle for the floor? We know that the table is better, but the floor you don’t have to work as hard for. If you choose the table, there’s the work of pulling out the chair. It can be harder, but there is so much more available.



My team and I are choosing to sit at the table, to no longer settle for the floor, but to ask the Lord for a chair because we want to feast with him. What are you choosing in your life, the table or the floor?