Exodus 25:23-30: a reflection

23“You shall make a table of acacia wood. Its length shall be two cubits, and its width a cubit, and its height one and a half cubits. 24You shall overlay it with pure gold, and make a gold molding around it. 25You shall make a rim of a hand width around it. You shall make a golden molding on its rim around it. 26You shall make four rings of gold for it, and put the rings in the four corners that are on its four feet. 27The rings shall be close to the rim, for places for the poles to carry the table. 28You shall make the poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold, that the table may be carried with them. 29You shall make its dishes, its spoons, its ladles, and its bowls with which to pour out offerings. You shall make them of pure gold. 30You shall set bread of the presence on the table before me always.

In the middle of detailed instructions for a table, gold molding, rings, poles for carrying, comes the reason for it all: you shall set the bread of the Presence on the table before me always. This table, so carefully made, exists to hold bread that stays continually before God, a standing sign that his people are always in his presence.

Notice the word always. The bread was not set out for a festival and then cleared away; it was kept there continually, week after week, a quiet, unbroken sign that God's people were before his face and welcome at his table. The care spent on the table, pure gold, precise measures, says something about how God values this continual nearness. It is not a small thing to him that his people are kept in his presence.

There is something to carry into an ordinary day here. God wants not occasional visits but a continual presence, bread always on the table, communion that does not get cleared away between feast days. And this table points ahead to another bread, the bread Christ would call his own body, the meal where he keeps his people near. Wherever you are today, you are welcome to stay in his presence, not just drop in. The bread is always on the table.

Lord, thank you that you keep bread always on your table and welcome your people continually into your presence. Teach me to stay near you, not just visit, and to feed on the bread you give.