The Free Table on Lavaca Street

Every Saturday morning in Austin, Texas, a retired chef named Margaret Huang sets up a long folding table on Lavaca Street, covered with a white cloth and loaded with fresh breakfast tacos, cold water, and hot coffee. No sign-up sheet. No donation jar. No strings. Just a hand-lettered sign that reads: "You're hungry. This is free. Sit down."

What strikes people isn't the food — it's the disbelief. Joggers slow down and circle back, suspicious. A young man in a business suit once stood at the curb for ten minutes before Margaret finally called out, "Honey, it's real. Just come eat." Office workers who spend fourteen dollars on avocado toast they scroll past walk right by Margaret's table, preferring what costs them something because free feels too strange to trust.

Margaret says the hardest part isn't the cooking or the early mornings. "It's convincing people they don't have to earn a seat."

This is the ache at the heart of Isaiah 55. The Almighty stands at the intersection of our striving and His grace, calling out, "Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat." We keep spending ourselves on what never satisfies — the promotions, the approval, the endless scrolling — while the table is already set and the invitation already spoken. God's ways are higher than our transactional instincts. His offer doesn't require your payment. It only requires your presence.