A Place at the Table Read Online Free PDF Page B

the top. On the crafts table, covered in old newspapers, he spreads out smelly markers and little cups of paint and paintbrushes and glue and glitter. Then he passes around a sheet of animal stickers and tells us we can each choose two. I choose a giraffe and a zebra. Mama has a zebra print top that she wore on her anniversary date with Daddy, which made Daddy widen his eyes and say Mama looked wild! Mr. Morgan tells us to mark “JLMTIK” on our pieces of plywood. Once our tags are decorated, we’ll attach them to the fronts of our bikes with two pipe cleaners each. Then when our unsaved friends ask, “What do those letters on your bike stand for?” we can witness just by answering their question. “Why, they stand for ‘Jesus Loves Me This I Know.’ ”
    The official colors of the RAs are gold and blue. I paint my tag all over with the darkest blue I can find. Hunter glances at it and snorts. “How you gonna write on top of that?” he asks. I don’t tell him, but I have a plan. Instead of writing my letters with markers, I form them with Elmer’s glue, then shake glitter all over them so that the letters sparkle and shine. I figure this will attract attention from miles away, plus I just love the way those sparkly letters look, all gold and glittery. When I finish, Mr. Morgan is so impressed he holds my tag up for everyone to see. He wants to know where on the tag I am planning to put the animal stickers and I tell him I think I might save them for something else, cause I don’t want to mess up the color scheme. Mr. Morgan says he guesses that will be okay.
    After we clean up everything, Mr. Morgan gives us a “straight talk”about witnessing. When witnessing, he says, you have to make sure not to act all superior and know-it-all-y. “God loves every single one of us,” Mr. Morgan says. “Even the lost. Especially the lost. And it is our job to coax lost souls to us, so they too can know God’s love. Think about the smell that comes out of the kitchen when your mama is baking cookies. Makes you want to go in there, doesn’t it? Well, that’s exactly how we need to present God’s love, as something warm and sweet and inviting. So when your friends ask about your license tag, tell them what it stands for, yes, but also make sure to tell them that you made it at this really neat club where you get to build race cars and have turkey shoots and play Go Fish and eat M&M’s.
    “Now, if you are talking to a friend and he asks specifically about Jesus, by all means keep talking. Let him know that Jesus loves you and will never let you down. Let him know that with Jesus in your life, you don’t ever have to be afraid, because even when you’re scared—especially when you’re scared!—the Lord is right there with you. But if he doesn’t ask about the Lord, just invite him to come to a meeting. Once he’s here, he’ll see what it means to be part of a Christian community, and he’ll want to keep coming back for more!”
    Mr. Morgan tells us that our challenge for the next week is to talk with three unsaved friends about our relationship with Christ. The problem is everyone I know goes to Clairmont Avenue Baptist and is already a Christian.
    I determine to cast my net far and wide and find someone new.
    And then I realize just what I need to do: take my bike over to Meemaw’s this upcoming Friday when I go to her house for a spend-the-night. I spend the night with her once a month, so the two of us can have some QT—which means “quality time.” This Friday is going to be especially fun, because not only will we do the usual stuff—watch animal shows, decorate a cake, pull out the box from her closet that holds the pair of chopped-off braids from when she was a little girl—Meemaw has a new kittennamed Moses and I am going to meet him and maybe even hold him if I am extra careful.
    Meemaw lives on the other side of the railroad tracks from us, kind of near Agnes Scott College, where Mama went for