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August 8 - August 31, 2019
an ordinary wooden picnic table that sparked a new way of seeing what belonging could look like.
The Turquoise Table is
a place for everyone from every walk of life to sit down in safety, dignity, respect, and love—to be heard and to belong.
without all the fuss and frenzy.
Sometimes we are called far and wide on a mission, but more often we are called to love others in our everyday, ordinary lives . . . right where we live: in our own front yards.
Take every opportunity to open your life and home to others. (Romans 12:13)
“Take every opportunity to open your life and home to others” (Romans 12:13).
I was craving depth but skimming the surface.
But before the sun even lit the sky, I had already been about as inhospitable as I could be.
“You can’t be what you can’t see.”
But I was beginning to see the vast difference between entertainment and hospitality.
There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. Leo Tolstoy
Our culture is hungry for table time. Leonard Sweet
God is teaching me the ministry of presence.
Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.
the sting of not being included,
Community is a basic need of humanity
Community is a basic need of humanity and the table—all tables—should be a place of inclusion.
not allowed to participate in Communion.
I felt like an outsider, excluded from the table. And not just any table—the Lord’s Table.
Unable to rationalize, I gave up on a God who I believed had surely given up on me. I locked up my faith and left it in that church in Dallas.
Wanderlust Era. Driven
planting the seeds of hospitality in my heart.
Some of the most wonderful moments where I truly felt I belonged occurred when I was a complete stranger to my hosts. In
When we open ourselves to the stranger, we open ourselves to the holy.
Hospitality is the love of strangers.
We are able to love because we were first loved.
There are no insiders when everyone is outside at the Turquoise Table. All are welcome.
He sent me outside my front door right into my front yard. God gave me a table.
I believe most social ills can be healed or prevented by the simple act of talking to one another,
The ancient practice of hospitality was born out of a need for safety.
Christians relied on the hospitality of strangers for a place to sleep, meals, and safety.
place of peace as an alternative to the fear of the unknown
The word recipe means both to give and to receive.
Sometimes we are the guest and sometimes we are the host. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. Jesus models this in His ministry—relying on the hospitality of strangers, having no real home. Yet at the same time He teaches us how to be a host by His perfect example.
We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in. Ernest Hemingway
“It’s when we come to the table, broken and vulnerable, not hiding behind our perfection, that the realness happens . . . when we’re really human we connect.”
when we come to the table broken, deep friendships can happen.
Our morning continued with each of us gently laying broken pieces of our lives on the table—the fragile marriage, the volatile temper, the compulsion to shop, the binge on Fritos, the loss of trust in a child.
It’s the brokenness of our own humanity we find so shameful to
share.
Brené Brown
We are “those people.” The truth is . . . we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one
affair away from being “those people”—the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our kids play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door.
Wounds don’t heal by themselves. They require clean water, antibiotic ointment, fresh air, and a bandage. Deeper wounds require medical expertise. Our shattered, interior, broken bits are no different.
The most beautiful people I know wear their imperfections with grace and confidence. It’s not pride or false humility, but a self-assurance from well-earned battle scars.
Hospitality takes the posture of humility, no longer seeking to impress but to serve.
Hospitality starts with our acknowledging our weaknesses, strengths, and shortcomings.
Grace can only flow freely through cracked pots.
our deep need for one another.
