Last month my husband and I enjoyed a wonderful break in the Yorkshire Dales. We stayed in a fairly remote village with a couple of pubs. After quite a long walk at the beginning of the week we decided that tea in the pub appealed as an inviting option. The first pub was closed and the second at the other end of the village was open but very busy. As we waited for a table, we observed the clientele - mostly older couples who looked like they had been on a good day's walk like us. There was one table of older ladies who were discussing the younger generation known to them with knowing nods and sighs. The atmosphere was that of quiet, elated chit-chat.
Our last evening saw us again venture out to the pub for tea. This time we entered the pub and were faced with a room full of big, burly, rough looking men. For a moment we wondered if we had come to the wrong pub but the lady at the bar recognised us and showed us to a table saying, ‘you better take this one quick before it goes.’ Next to us sat four rather large, gruff men with long beards in leathers and t-shirts. My husband and I glanced at each other, feeling very out of place in our smart casual attire. Soon another, jeans and t-shirt clad, older man came and squeezed onto the bench seat next to my husband, obviously with the party of four beside us. He turned to apologise to my husband who had moved over as much as he was able to in order to allow the man to sit down. A conversation started up and it turned out that these were all bikers on a rally who were camping in a field next to the village. My husband leant over and passed a menu to the chap who had just joined us. ‘Oh no’, he said, ‘I’ve eaten, I bring my stew on my bike!’ The thought of this older biker bringing his stew on his Harley Davidson gave my husband and I a very different view of bikers. We chuckled as we walked back to the cottage over images of the elderly biker heating his stew up on a camp stove with his bike parked beside in all its glory.
It made me think of Jesus and the many houses He ate in - the wedding feast at Cana, Lazarus' house, Zacchaeus, Simon the Pharisee, Matthew and his tax collector friends. Jesus didn’t mind who he ate with and He accepts everyone into His house - elderly ladies, walkers, bikers, little children and even you and me. We can come with our sins, our fears, our sadness’s, our anxieties, our brokenness, our shame, our sicknesses. Jesus doesn’t mind. All He minds is that we come to Him, just as we are, in all our entirety. He holds His door open, all we have to do is go right through. Who knows He might be waiting there with a stew for us……….
Jesus said, “Let the children come to me and do not stop them, because the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14 (Good News Translation)