Habitat For Humanity Families Receive Handmade Tables From Man Who Found a New Calling

Habitat for Humanity families receive handmade tables from a man who found a new calling. When Tom Schulte retired from a career in the insurance business, he found himself facing the question so many people eventually ask when one season of life closes: Now what? He could play golf, tennis, or pickleball, but after a while, Tom wanted his days to hold something more.

So he began volunteering one day a week with Habitat for Humanity, helping build homes for families in Georgia, many of them single mothers with children. For eight years, Tom helped put up walls and roofs, but somewhere along the way, he began noticing what was missing inside those new homes. 

Retired Man Finds a New Calling With Habitat for Humanity

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“They don’t have much. It’s their first home,” Tom said. And he began wondering what more he could give. Then it clicked. A table. “I’ll build a table. I’m going to give it to these Habitat families,” Tom said.

And isn’t there something incredible about that? Tom had spent years helping families receive houses, and now he would give them a place to gather inside those walls. A table where little hands will do homework. Where birthday candles will be blown out, ordinary Tuesday dinners will be eaten, hard conversations will happen, and stories will be told until they become family history.

430 Handmade Tables Give Families a Place to Gather

There is something sacred about gathering around a table. Scripture is filled with tables and meals, from Abraham welcoming strangers to Jesus breaking bread with His disciples. Jesus ate with people others overlooked. He fed crowds, shared meals with friends and, on the night before the cross, gathered those He loved around a table and told them to remember Him.

Tom’s idea became ‘Your Family’s Table.’ Six years later, he has handmade 430 tables, and he and his wife load them into a custom trailer and travel across Georgia, delivering them to Habitat homeowners they have often never met.

But Tom doesn’t want to deliver furniture alone. He wants to create a place where families choose each other again and again.

“Every family has problems,” Tom said. “But if you sit at the table and talk about it, you know, it’ll help keep that family together. And if we did it for one family, we won, right?”

Each Table Comes With a Meaningful Family Tradition

Each family also receives a basket for the table, but Tom has an unexpected purpose for it. Instead of filling it with fruit, he asks families to put their phones inside while they eat. For a little while, the screens disappear, and the people sitting across from each other become the focus again.

Before every table leaves his workshop, Tom signs the bottom with three words: “Your Family’s Table.”

And perhaps those words are a blessing all their own.

Because long after Tom drives away, families will keep pulling chairs around what his hands built. Children will grow up there. Prayers will be whispered there. Laughter will spill across it, tears will fall onto it, and people who once wondered if they would ever own a home will sit together and realize: This is ours.

Tom thought retirement meant figuring out what to do next. Perhaps God already knew. He still had tables to build.

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“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies: you anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over.” Psalm 23:5

WATCH: Habitat For Humanity Families Receive Handmade Tables From Man Who Found a New Calling 

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h/t: CBS News

Featured Image Credit: YouTube/CBS Evening News

Heather Riggleman is a believer, wife, mom, author, social media consultant, and full-time writer. She lives in Minden, Nebraska with her kids, high school sweetheart, and three cats who are her entourage around the homestead. She is a former award-winning journalist with over 2,000 articles published. She is full of grace and grit, raw honesty, and truly believes tacos can solve just about any situation. You can find her on GodUpdates, iBelieve, Crosswalk, Hello Darling, Focus On The Family, and in Brio Magazine. Connect with her at www.HeatherRiggleman.com or on Facebook.