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Dear Covenant Friends,
My husband has been in a conflict with a pair of groundhogs all year. They live under our side porch, adjacent to the vegetable garden. Truth be told, it is a protracted conflict. This year’s portly couple are likely several generations past the brave ground chuck that stood up to our German Shepherd some fifteen years ago and left him with a bloody nose.
We’ve tried fences, chicken wire, filling holes and planting garlic, but they always come back. They have been known to appear just as my husband is beginning a zoom meeting from his first-floor office that looks out onto our porch. They like to stare at him through the window with a big-toothed grin, holding a tomato.
With the impending cold weather, we are removing tomato vines, overgrown squash and shiny eggplants, happy to have one last harvest. Except we left the bowl outside, unintentionally setting the table for our furry enemies.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, the psalmist writes, and why shouldn’t those hallowed words apply to whistle-pigs, worms and whales, as well as human beings? Our porch residents have been chased, tormented, cursed at and frightened during lives that last only 2-3 years on average. Meanwhile, their tunnels aerate the earth beneath our feet and contribute to a healthy ecosystem. It seems fair that weeks before hibernation, they found a feast.
The Bible is full of images and teachings meant to reveal our connections to one another and to the earth. A portion of wheat and grapes were to be left for the stranger, the traveler, the immigrant- kindness embedded in God’s commands. When we read Psalm 23’s abundant provision, we are meant not only to receive it - the Lord is my shepherd- but enable others to receive it too- rest, water, protection, food, goodness, mercy.
So why is it easier to care for pets, and feed birds and share gardens with groundhogs than to share what we have with people in need? If God prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies, aren’t we called to imitate this divine hospitality, this recognition of basic human dignity?
A few years ago, I visited a friend in prison and ran into the jail’s chaplain. She and her husband were planning their annual Thanksgiving meal for the prisoners, using their own resources to provide ham, turkey and all the fixings for the feast. There is something wonderfully concrete about that kind of grace. A feast that says, “You, too, belong at a table. You, too, are worthy of care.” We can spend a great deal of time deciding who deserves what. Meanwhile, the chaplain was planning dinner.
Perhaps that is one way we learn to live Psalm 23: receiving God’s goodness and mercy and then helping set a table where someone else can experience them. We don’t have to resolve every difference or overcome every fear before we begin. We can start by asking who is hungry, who is hurting, who has been left out, and what we have to share.
At our house, a pair of groundhogs is settling in for winter with full bellies. I can’t promise my husband a change of heart by spring. But I suspect God’s hospitality will keep stretching us both.
Pastor Jessie
pastor@covenantweb.org
October 21, 2026
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