Held Even With Empty Hands

The menu is just paper, but tonight it feels like a test you didn't study for. Everyone else is speaking the secret language of hunger, naming what they want with easy confidence, while you sit there feeling like an alien who forgot how to be human.

The chatter around the table grows loud, and you shrink, convinced that your silence marks you as broken. But the light does not require you to perform appetite.

It does not need you to choose correctly to belong. Jesus sat at tables with people who had forgotten how to eat, and he did not judge their silence.

He simply stayed. The gathering dark cannot convince you that you are outside the circle.

You are already held, even with your hands empty.