A Set Table in a Safe Tree

---

We read Miss Twiggley’s Tree so many times that both covers tore off, including the final page of the book, which offered the moral of the story. But the last page I had was enough. It pictured the inside of Miss Twiggley’s house, tucked deep in the boughs of a willow tree, where the entire town had climbed for refuge from a wild hurricane.

The watercolor picture was like looking through a window into the warmth of the dry treehouse, where the town dogs gathered ‘round a game of Chinese checkers, children played blind man’s bluff in the back room, and people were wrapped in blankets, eating popcorn, singing along to the banjo. In the kitchen near the back was Miss Twiggley herself, who wore a blue apron, had a pot simmering on the woodstove, and was carrying a tray of tea to her guests—guests that included “the mayor, and the chief of police, and sweet Trudy Wilmot, the groceryman’s niece.”

Before the storm, the townspeople had only complained about funny Miss Twiggley who lived in a tree, with a dog named Puss and a color TV. Most disgusted of all was the mayor’s wife, who gossiped about the absurdity of it all. But when the floodwaters rose, Mrs. Mayor and the rest of the townsfolk had nowhere else to flee.

“In the very last boat
Bedgraggled and wet,
Was the wife of the mayor
Looking upset.

“She was so ashamed
Of the words she had said,
When her hostess declared,
‘I’ve fixed you my bed.’”

---

C.S. Lewis once told a little girl that someday, she would be old enough to start reading fairy tales again,[i] so in my twenties, I think I understand Miss Twiggley’s tale a little better now. When I was Elsie’s age, I read the book with much love for Miss Twiggley and much disgust for the mayor’s wife. Now, when I read it to Elsie and the boys, I flinch a little, because I am old enough to see myself in the wife of the mayor, who didn’t have room in her heart for a stranger.

Now, when I get to the last page of the story, I look through the window into the gathering place of wet strangers and stragglers, and I still feel a longing to belong at a table like that. But I also know that I’ll never deserve to be welcomed inside.

Yet in Jesus’s kingdom, I am welcomed anyway.

Miss Twiggley battened her hatches and set her table for anyone who would come out of the storm, and neither is Jesus partial to the guests at his table. John’s gospel testifies to this again and again, as Jesus welcomed one sojourner after another to himself. He sat down in the dark with Nicodemus to answer his questions. He offered water to the woman at the well in the heat of the day. He poured wine for the wedding guests at Cana. He broke and supplied bread to thousands on the hillside by the sea. He went up to the feast at Jerusalem to set a table and offer true food and everlasting water that would fill their glasses for all eternity.

Pharisees, women, strangers, disciples, children, rulers, doubters, thieves—Jesus offered a sweeping invitation to them all:

“…Everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast!” (Matthew 22:4)

Or, in the words of Miss Twiggley:

“’There’s room for you all,’
Miss Twiggley replied.
‘Come up where it’s warm;
Come up and be dried.’”

The gospel call is as generous as Miss Twiggley, and the seats around Jesus’s table are many, filled by folks like Nicodemus and a host of Samaritans and people who were once blind, crippled, hungry, or caught in sin. John wrote that “whoever believes” in the Son will have eternal life (Jn. 3:16), and whoever leaves no one out in the rain.

That is, it leaves out no one who will believe. To be welcomed at the table, you must “Come” to it.

So I do.

Last to the feast, bedraggled and wet, I hardly deserve to be invited, and I certainly shouldn’t be ushered in. But the gospel is hospitable, and the wedding feast is for anyone who will take the invitation, and like the inside of Miss Twiggley’s tree, the set table of the King is the safest place from the storm.

---

[i] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (HarperCollins: 1950. New York, NY)
[ii] All quotes from: Miss Twiggley’s Tree, Dorthea Warren Fox. (Purple House Press: 1994. Cynthiana, KY)