Dinner tables are underrated. It’s not that we don’t appreciate their aesthetic appeal or their functionality in holding our digestible goods. What we tend to miss is the potency of a table’s presence in the community life of our homes. Because tables don’t simply hold our food—they hold the potential to transform us.
What if sharing food and drink isn’t just about consuming things together? What if it’s also an invitation to cultivate connection with one another and the God who loves us?
Whether your meal table is in an apartment or formal dining room, God is calling you to connect with people and with him over food. If you’re single, married, raising kids, or navigating retirement, God wants you to have a table that trades quick consumption for the careful cultivation of life.
Let’s think about what transformational tables could look like depending on who’s sitting down with you.
Planting Seeds: Tables with Younger Kids
Mealtime with younger kids is unavoidably messy, yet it’s also a precious season to plant seeds. Here are three ideas to help form a connected life for little ones at your table.
- Clear the Table for Connection: Mealtime is largely influenced by what’s not on our tables. While it may cause short-term frustration for little ones (and adults), consider enforcing a rule of no screens or toys at the table. This frees us to use our whole selves while sharing food. As important as our mouths are during meals, our eyes and ears matter just as much!
- Share Food & Life: Let everyone know that the goal of mealtime isn’t just consuming food but connecting through conversation. Use verbal tools like “high-low-buffalo” or tangible items like a feelings chart to share how the day’s been. Don’t be afraid to let this be silly and loud. You’re not shooting for perfection—you’re cultivating an environment where people feel seen, known, and loved.
- Record Gratitude & Growth: Take a few mealtimes each week to record three things each person at the table wants to thank God for. This practice opens our eyes and hearts to God’s daily provision that includes the food yet goes beyond it as well.
Bonus: After you’ve kept a journal for over a year, use each mealtime as a “gratitude anniversary” to revisit what you wrote the previous year. Double bonus: Have older kiddos take over the job of writing in the journal.
The Patience of a Gardener: Tables with Teenagers
If tables have the potential to transform us, then mealtimes with teenagers can require the patience of a gardener. Yes, life feels too busy to slow down and eat together. But really, it’s too busy for you to not slow down and eat together. Yes, they may not seem like they want to talk to you, but they need your faithful presence.
Here are three ideas to patiently, graciously share a meaningful table with your teenager:
- Protect the Setting: The busyness monster rears its ugly head with reckless abandon in this season of life. While some of this might be unavoidable, combat the forces of busyness with your own ruthless defense of at least one night for family meals each week.
- Sharpen Your Tools: The connection tools you used for little ones may need some sharpening for this season. Consider reading and discussing the excellent book, 3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager. While the book offers a host of helpful perspectives, one of my favorite tools is this simple response when your teenager isn’t wanting to share much: “Tell me more.” The goal isn’t just to get them talking but to help them be curious about how God is present and growing them.
- Equip for Cultivation: If you haven’t done so already, consider using this stage to pass along ownership of table life to the next generation. If your family prays before meals, regularly invite your teen to pray. If your teenager is interested in food, wrap them into the process of crafting a menu and cooking the food. The point: help them see that they aren’t just recipients of God’s formation at the table—they’re participants in it as well.
Formation & Fruit: Ongoing Cultivation with Adults
The significance of table life doesn’t stop with any one stage or season. It’s an enduring space for transformation as we celebrate how God is moving and anticipate how he still wants to grow our connection with him and one another.
Here are three perspectives to contemplate as you continue the infinite journey of growing around the table:
- Tables of Invitation: As the years go by, think about how you can help more people know that Jesus is more around your table. This will usually mean getting outside of your comfort zone, which is where the best growth usually happens. Consider extending invitations to your neighbors, co-workers, or fellow students. Don’t just invite them over for food—invite them to feel seen, known, and loved around your table. Extending invitations like these is ultimately an extension of God’s grace.
- Tables of Intimacy: The fruitfulness of mealtimes is measured not only with the breadth of our invitations, but the depth of our intimacy as well. If God has placed a smaller group of close friends in your life, cultivate a rhythm of connection and hospitality through regular hosting. Get to know each other’s stories, desires, and fears. Memorize the names and needs of their extended family members. Pray for each other, fight for each other, and lean on Jesus together. If it seems like God hasn’t placed these people in your life just yet, he’s likely calling you to be a catalyst in the process, so start planting seeds.
- Tables of Imagination: Meals are a means of God’s grace in getting us to the finish line of faith, yet they also await us at the journey’s destination (Revelation 19:9). The fruit of our table life in the present is a small foretaste of what we’ll have forever. Because all of this is a foretaste, we are released from the demanding expectations of perfection or performance in meals. The goal isn’t to have a permanently ideal feast this side of the new creation. The goal is to use our meals to preview the new creation beauty of life together.
Our tables are meant to awaken the imagination and stir deep cravings for something beyond this world. This future-orientation frees us to be fully present, curious, and gracious each time we sit at the table.
The dinner table is a place where we savor the fruit of the harvest. Yet at the same time, it’s a place where we sow—planting seeds with the patience of a gardener, trusting that God will use our meals to bear a different kind of fruit in our life stories. As you consider how God is calling you to cultivate life and love during meals, may he bless your slow, persistent labor. By his grace, you will look back over weeks, months, and decades, and find that he was using your table to transform you and others for generations to come.