The Empty Chair at Margaret's Table

Every Thanksgiving for forty-one years, Margaret Ellison set a place for her husband, Carl, at the head of their dining table in Boone, North Carolina. After he died of pancreatic cancer in 1982, the family dreaded that first holiday without him. Margaret's daughter begged her to rearrange the seating. Margaret refused.

"That chair isn't empty," she said. "It's a reminder that death didn't get the last word."

She wasn't in denial. She had washed Carl's face in the hospice. She had picked out the casket. She knew exactly what death could do. But she also knew what it could not do. It could not separate Carl from Christ. It could not undo the resurrection that awaited him. And so every November, Margaret set the plate, poured the sweet tea, and bowed her head to pray with a defiance that made her grandchildren sit up straighter.

When Margaret herself passed in 2023 at ninety-four, her granddaughter found a note tucked into the family Bible: "Death is a bully with no teeth. Christ knocked them out on Easter morning."

That is what Paul means when he taunts, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" Because of what Jesus accomplished through His death and resurrection, death has been emptied of its power. Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory — not someday, but right now, even at a table with an empty chair.