Jesus was a carpenter, but as an artisan, not simply a builder. My “office” table was built by the Boos company and was intended to be a cutting board in a kitchen. It sits in the corner of what I sentimentally call my “cabin,” a room with knotty pine walls and ceilings, a space of intimacy, warmth, and windows. Twelve windows in all that let me see the sun coming from the east in the morning and the shadows as they move to the west in the evening. It’s sturdy, as cutting boards should be. It’s the perfect height to give me a view of the horizon—with its sunlight, trees, clouds, and the morning marine layer of fog. After all, I live on an island in the Pacific Northwest.
This table has become, for me, my altar in the world; it is more than just furniture.
Tables
Imagine walking into “the cabin,” where the smell of freshly brewed coffee fills the air, courtesy of my Stanley French press, and lights warmly offer a welcoming ambiance. You find your way to the sofa, where a steaming cup of hot coffee awaits in a familiar gesture of hospitality. We are here for something that sounds formal, perhaps mentoring, but I prefer to call it spiritual friendship.
You join me, and the cedar coffee table invites you to find this a comfortable and familiar place. You have been here before. We join together and recognize that the tables in the room are not merely furniture, but sanctuaries for holy conversation, laughter, memories, questions, prayer, the silence of pause, and connection—the community that early followers of Jesus called koinonia.
Altars
Tables in sanctuaries are often called altars—a cleric or priest stands before others and performs a most ordinary but still unsettling thing: he or she consecrates ordinary things (bread and wine), making this altar a place of presence and nourishment. Transformation shimmers in repeating Jesus’ own actions of breaking bread, blessing cups, and speaking of days to come that will be filled with trauma and death, but followed by resurrection and life. Tables are transformative.
Jesus the artisan loved to build tables. No, there is no biblical text that proves that, but I have met Jesus at the tables of my life—family tables, communion tables, study tables, dining tables—all of which have served as a stage for stories to be experienced in the sacramental transformation of the ordinary into the sacred. Tables can be places of God’s grace given—and there is a profound word—given to us. The ordinary meets the extraordinary, the mundane becomes a consecrated altar for presence, nourishment, and encounter.
Presence
Mentoring is its own table of hospitality, sacramentality, sacred conversation, prayer, questions, and grace given by the Spirit, whom Paul says prays for us even when we don’t know how to pray for ourselves (Romans 8). You may enter an office or sign in to a Zoom call with the presence of someone you are learning to trust. They welcome you, perhaps with a prayer for the time together or a question in which you both will specialize in the ordinary: “What came into the room with you today?” “Are you at peace?” or “Tell me your story of the past week.” As your words tumble together, you may sense that you are not alone as two but in the holy presence of a third, the Holy Spirit, whose presence is the reason you have gathered.
Practice:
This week, pay attention to the tables in your life. Choose one—your kitchen table, a work desk, a coffee shop booth—and sit there with intention. As you do, ask God to help you see that space not just as furniture, but as a possible altar of presence. Invite someone into conversation there. Or simply sit in quiet, welcoming the Spirit who joins you in the ordinary.
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Keith Anderson, D.Min., is a Faculty Associate for Spirituality and Vocation at VantagePoint3 and President Emeritus of Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. He is the author of several books, including his most recent: On Holy Ground: Your Story of Identity, Belonging and Sacred Purpose (Wipf & Stock, 2024). His other works include Reading Your Life’s Story (IVP, 2016), A Spirituality of Listening (IVP, 2016), and Spiritual Mentoring (IVP, 1999). In his writing, teaching, and mentoring, Keith seeks to set a table for people looking to enter the “amazing inner sanctuary of the soul” in the most ordinary and extraordinary moments of life.