“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” wrote Charles Dickens in A TALE OF TWO CITIES. A long while back, when I attended a debriefing conference after a year of missions in the Dominican Republic, the instructor used this phrase to describe the mission experience. Its profoundness struck and resonated with me as never before. 

Despite this, and despite the fact that I have chosen drifting between light and darkness as the theme of the novel I’ll finish one day, until recently, I somehow missed that it is one of MY life themes. I realized it when a beloved former student gifted me with a children’s book for my baby shower. Inside the cover, she wrote a note stating that the book reminded her of me because of the many conversations we had shared about all the beauty, challenges, joy, and sorrow life simultaneously offers us in our journeys.

I’ve been thinking about all of this again recently as I enjoy the rapture of watching my baby girl grow. I should say that due to sleep deprivation, my battle with chronic pain, and the busyness of trying to find balance after returning to work, I work at being present enough to enjoy every moment.

As I search for balance and joy amidst the challenges, I’m reminded of a phrase from the favored Twenty-third Psalm. David wrote of our Shepherd, “He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” IN the presence of my enemies, a table is prepared. I can picture that table. It’s a long banquet table set up on a sprawling porch, prepared with the choicest food and drink, decorated with flowers and fine linens, lit with candles. As the enemies of sleeplessness and pain and the frantic pace of American life look on, there I am, seated with my Shepherd at the close of day. My daughter and family and treasured friends surround us. We smile and laugh and enjoy one another as the sun sets. All the while, my enemies lurk and darkness descends.

Some days, as I practice gratitude in stillness, it’s relatively simple and easy to some to the table. Others, as as is typical of my dinnertime reality, I struggle to cease striving and sit still. A friend once described this type of experience to me as picking at the crumbs on the floor when I’ve been invited to a feast. Still other days, it feels as though I must fight my way through bramble and thorned brush just to find where the table IS. But the invitation is always there. 

My Lord says, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! … Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:1a;2b). As counterintuitive as it may seem, the beautiful table prepared is often an altar. I reach it best by kneeling, laying down my best efforts, perfectionism, and striving to do it all on my own—laying down selfish ambition and my ideals of what the table should look like, who I’ll be seated with, what will be served, and how long the meal should last. Above all, I must accept that my task is to enjoy THIS meal without worrying about the next, without being able to control that my enemies haven’t left me in peace. I must claim the peace and respite offered anyway. 

In her stunning book, AN ALTAR IN THIS WORLD: A GEOGRAPHY OF FAITH, author Barbara Brown Taylor invites, “Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it. So welcome to your own priesthood, practiced at the altar of your own life. The good news is that you have everything you need to begin.”