New Start - January 22, 2021

Dinner was quit a ritual at our family when I was a kid.  My dad rode a bus to work and so it was at a usual time he would arrive home from work.  Mom would call us kids from whatever activities we were up to and tell us it was time to eat.  No, we did not have a dinner bell.  There were some other rituals or rules that went along with eating at the table.  First of all you had to wash your hands before you ate and this was generally a wise idea because many time we would have been outside playing and so we were usually dirty.  Especially my brother and me, sometimes my sister might have been playing the piano or doing other things inside, but she still had to wash her hands.  Maybe we were preparing for 2020 pandemic days.  The rules that did not make sense to me as a kid were the "no hat" and you had to "have a shirt on" to eat.  Hats do not hinder the meal for anyone.  I would rather look at a person with a hat on than a person with messed up hair.  And a shirt, really?  When you got really dirty out playing in the dirt and you had to wash up and take your dirty shirt in the laundry, why would you want to put a clean shirt on just to eat?  I mean I often was (maybe still am) a messy eater and then I would spill food on my clean shirt and that just meant more laundry for my mom. 

The Pharisees of Jesus day also had some rules and traditions that they followed as seriously as my mom followed the dinner time rules.  The problem is that Jesus said their rules had become more important than the heart of worship.  Jesus quoted this passage from Isaiah to describe the problem. 

Isaiah 29:13 And so the Lord says,
    “These people say they are mine.
They honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
And their worship of me
    is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote."

Jesus reminds us that our worship must be from the heart and that sometimes we can miss the heart of worship with all our rules.  Many people go through the ritual of worship but never really allow the Holy Spirit to transform their hearts.  We know we are suppose to show up to the dinner table with clean hands and dressed in a clean shirt, but we forget the most important part is to show up with a heart connected to God. 

I am grateful for the times we spent as a family around the table.  My heart is warmed by those precious memories.