There is something intimate about entering someone’s home and sharing a meal together. Jesus desires intimacy with us, His own creation. He is knocking, waiting, longing for us to open the door of our heart, to let Him in, to share our personal lives with Him.
I once heard a pre-school teacher tell the children that school was not a place to share your personal life. She just wanted them to answer her questions, to keep the conversation pristine, sterile, factual, avoiding the messiness of personal home life. Maybe because she didn’t want to know. Maybe because it was too painful or too dirty or too silly. Maybe because it might expose some of her own pain. Maybe because it would bring life questions that she had no answers for.
I have no idea why anyone would tell three-year olds to keep their personal lives to themselves, not to talk about home. Home is their life. It’s all they have. It’s all they know. Her statement broke my heart. At such a tender young age, these children were already learning to hide the truth and realities of their own lives, to hide the pain, to keep the secrets, to put on a mask, to live shallow, surface level lives with shallow, surface level relationships.
But Jesus is not at all like this teacher. He wants to know all there is to know about those little children. He wants to know all there is to know about that teacher. He wants to know you. He wants to know me. Of course, He already knows. He already cares, but He wants us to open our hearts to Him.
Because He wants us to know HIM…personally, intimately, fully…no matter how painful or messy or dirty or silly or broken our lives may be.
He wants to share a meal with us. Every meal with us. Today and forever. And no matter what we share with Him, He will remain faithful; He will always be with us; He will never leave us or forsake us.
