When I was a boy, I didn’t always welcome the call to dinner, especially on long summer days when busy building tree houses in the sycamores or playing ball in the street. In the cold dusk of winter, I came more happily to my mother who stood under the porch light calling, “Mark, dinner.” After hours building snow forts or hurling snow balls at friends, the promise of a warm kitchen and hot food was irresistible.
My own boys are all grown and on their own, but Dallas has been with us a few weeks. When Teckla opened the stairway door and called him to dinner, I realized I missed the sound of her calling the boys. The call to dinner seems like the heart song of a home and a family.
But in a way, Christian parents never stop calling their kids to dinner. My mother is almost 93. At a prayer meeting this week, I listened to her praying and remembered the beauty of her voice when she called me to dinner on warm summer evenings. I realized that in her prayers, she was still calling me to a dinner—the wedding feast of the Lamb. Her example, generosity, and prayers have faithfully called all her children and grandchildren to that great Sunday dinner.
I too have never stopped calling. I have named my blog marksletters, but a better name would be dadsletters. The postings are really letters to my boys—just a way to keep calling them to dinner even though they have their own places. I hope my blogs somehow release some of the fragrance of Christ—the goodness of Jesus who is the Bread of Life.
Teckla and I in our prayers, love, and kindness, (even my blog) will always be calling our boys to dinner and to Jesus. We want no empty places or missing faces at God’s table. Instead of standing on the porch or yelling up the stairs, we call out to God and entrust the call to dinner to the Holy Spirit that always says, “Come!”
As much as I love hearing the call to dinner, these days I find the answer even sweeter: “Coming!”
