I Do Not Cook When It Is Only Me

In my grandmother's kitchen there was no such thing as a small meal.

Somebody arrived, and there was a proper plate. Somebody stayed late, and there was a proper plate. She would put a cloth on the table for one person and think nothing of it, because in her mind the table is the table and it does not scale down.

She did that for sixty years for everybody who came through her door, and it was care and everybody knew it.

And I never once saw her make herself a meal.

I have thought about that all my life. And I want to say the first thing plainly, before anything else, because I know what a woman thinks when this subject comes up.

Standing at the counter is not laziness.

It is not lack of energy either, not usually. A woman who will cook properly for four people on a Thursday and stand at the counter with a slice of something on Friday is not tired on Friday and rested on Thursday. Something else is going on.

What is going on is arithmetic. The effort is being weighed against the occasion, and one person has been assessed as not enough of an occasion.

The occasion arithmetic

Look at what the sum actually contains, because it is the same one every time.

There is a cost, which is the cooking. There is an occasion, which is the people. And the cost is only justified if the occasion is large enough, and one person is not, so the cost is declined and the counter gets used instead.

That is a completely reasonable calculation, and it runs about three hundred times a year.

You are running a reasonable calculation that has quietly cost you three hundred meals, and no arithmetic that sound has ever once been examined. It is written in 1 Kings 19 that an angel touched him and said, arise and eat, and the Spirit of God is the one who interrupts a sensible habit.

Now notice the thing that makes it strange. You would not apply it to anybody else on earth.

If one friend came round on her own, on a Tuesday, unannounced, there would be a plate and a table and probably a cloth. The occasion arithmetic would not run at all. One person would be enough of an occasion instantly.

You are running a calculation on exactly one person in the world, and no visitor of yours has ever once been assessed for size before being fed. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman the sum she is running, and 1 Kings 19 has somebody fed twice with no assessment made about anything.

And here is what the counter has cost over the years.

Eating standing up is not a meal. That is not fussiness, it is a fact about bodies. Nothing that happens standing at a counter in four minutes gets registered by a body as having eaten, which is why women who do it are often hungry an hour later and cannot work out why.

So three hundred times a year, a woman feeds her household properly and does not quite feed herself.

You are the one person in this house who has never once been given a proper meal, and standing at a counter has never registered as eating anywhere in a body. Scripture in 1 Kings 19 has a man given food and told plainly why, and the Spirit of God is the one who sets a place for the woman who sets all the others.

Arise and eat

There is a moment in 1 Kings where a man has had enough of everything and lies down under a tree, and what happens next is not a sermon.

And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee. (1 Kings 19:7, King James Version)

Elijah has just asked to die. He is at the end of himself, and there is no argument in this passage, no correction, and nothing about his theology.

There is a touch and a plain instruction. Arise and eat.

And then a reason that is entirely practical: because the journey is too great for thee.

You are met with food and a reason rather than with an argument, and no assessment of anybody's spiritual state has ever once preceded that instruction. It is written in 1 Kings 19 that the angel said arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who feeds a woman before anything else gets discussed.

And notice the word again. The angel came again the second time.

He had already been fed once. He ate, and lay down again, and the angel came back and did the same thing a second time, because once was not sufficient for what was ahead of him.

Nobody in that passage suggests one meal ought to have been enough. Nobody says he is being indulgent. He is fed twice, on the ground, in the middle of nowhere, because the journey required it.

You are somebody the provision comes back for, and there has never once been a suggestion in that chapter that one meal was sufficient. The Spirit of God is what comes a second time to a woman who is still not fed, and the written word says arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee.

One real thing, sitting down

So here is the assignment, and there are two halves and the second one matters more.

Cook one real thing this week when there is nobody else in the house, and sit down for it.

The cooking first. Something that takes actual time. Whatever you would make if one friend arrived, and no shortcuts on the grounds that it is only you.

And then the sitting down, which is the half that gets skipped.

You are allowed the second half as well as the first, and sitting down has never once been the optional part of a meal. 1 Kings 19 says arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee, and the Holy Spirit is what keeps a woman at a table she was going to leave standing.

At the table. On a plate. Not standing, not at the counter, and not in front of anything. Ten minutes at a table with a proper plate in front of you.

There is a reason the sitting down matters more than the cooking. A body knows the difference between fuel and a meal, and the difference is almost entirely about whether you sat down. That is not sentiment, it is how eating actually works in a person.

You are able to sit down for ten minutes with a plate in front of you, and a body has never once registered a meal that was eaten standing up. The written word in 1 Kings 19 has a man fed on the ground because the journey was too great, and the Holy Spirit is what makes one meal at a table into care rather than into effort.