Who's At Your Table?

During Lent, the churches I serve are doing a sermon series and accompanying Bible study based off of Adam Hamilton's book 24 Hours that Changed the World, which focus on the last 24 hours of Jesus' life from the meal he shared with his disciples (the last supper) to his death on the cross. At the suggestion of the author I posed the question, if you knew you had one last meal to eat, who would you want at the table with you? I asked the same question at Bible study and I was surprised that people only answered their family.

Don't get me wrong, families are important, but the point Hamilton was trying to make was about spiritual friends, that as we end our life their are people that we have shared our lives with who are deep spiritual companions, and for Jesus, these people were not family.

As I considered this question in my own life, of course I would want my family there. But there are also friends I want around the table. People whom I have been blessed to share my life with. I started to wonder if this was because I was single, but that's not the case at all. I want those individuals around the table with me because I have been blessed by them, and that is not something I need to apologize for. I have been given a gift of wonderful friends, lasting friends. Sometimes we only have friends for seasons, but other times we have been given the treasurer of a lifetime friend, a spiritual companion, and I would be honored to see their faces around my last meal.