Cooking For One Again

It is only you.

That is the sentence, said kindly, by you, to you, at about half past five, and it ends the matter every time.

Why go to the trouble. Why dirty a pan and a board and a plate for one person. Why stand at a stove for twenty minutes so that one woman can sit down for ten.

So it is toast. Or it is something on toast. Or it is the thing from the freezer that requires the machine and not the stove, and it is eaten standing up or in the chair with the television on, and it takes four minutes and then the evening carries on.

And there is nothing wrong with it. Nobody is unwell. You are not neglected.

It is just that a life that used to involve cooking now does not, and the reason it does not is a sentence about being worth the bother.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical.

Nothing in this article thinks you should be cooking for other people to make it count.

Nobody is going to suggest you invite somebody over, or cook for the freezer, or find an occasion. What follows is one pan, tonight, for one person, and the one person is the whole point rather than a sad version of a bigger point.

Not one of them is forgotten before God

There is a line in Luke about the smallest possible thing being counted, and the arithmetic in it is deliberately absurd.

Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? (Luke 12:6, King James Version)

Five sparrows for two farthings.

That is a market price, and it is a low one. Sparrows were what a person bought when there was nothing else, sold in handfuls, and the arithmetic in the verse is pointed: five for two, which means the fifth one was thrown in because it was not worth pricing.

And it is that fifth sparrow the sentence is about. Not one of them is forgotten.

You are the one that does not get priced separately and is counted anyway, and a household of one has never once been the amount that stops mattering. Luke 12:6 goes out of its way to count the bird that was thrown in free, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman standing in a kitchen at half past five.

And notice what the verse does not do with the smallness.

It does not argue that sparrows are secretly valuable, and it does not improve the price. It leaves the market exactly as it is and says that the reckoning God does is a different reckoning entirely.

Which is the answer to why go to the trouble. The trouble was never being weighed against how many people are eating.

You have been weighed on a scale nobody was using, and the number of people at a table has never once been what decided whether the meal was worth making. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has been doing sums about bother, and Luke 12:6 leaves the low price standing and counts the bird regardless.

Worth the bother is a measurement of somebody else

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction. Worth the bother is a phrase that measures effort against a beneficiary, and the beneficiary in that sum has quietly stopped being you.

Listen to it in your own voice. Why dirty a pan for one person. That sentence would be unthinkable said about your daughter, or about a guest, or about anybody who came to that door hungry. You would dirty every pan in the house.

Which means the sum is not actually about pans. It is about who is on the other side of the effort, and somewhere in the last few years you moved off that side.

That is not a failing. It is what happens to a woman who spent decades being the one who does the cooking for others. The habit of measuring an effort by who it serves is an excellent habit, and it has one blind spot in it.

You were left off your own list rather than judged not worth it, and a lifetime of feeding other people has never once made a woman the wrong person to feed. Luke 12:6 insists on the fifth sparrow being counted, and the Holy Spirit is the one with somebody who has been quietly left out of her own arithmetic.

And here is the second half, which is about the evening rather than the food.

Twenty minutes at a stove and ten at a table is not an inefficiency. It is a shape for an hour that otherwise has no shape in it at all, and the four minute version buys nothing at all except more of an evening that was not being enjoyed.

The cooking is not the cost. The cooking is part of what you are buying.

You have an hour tonight that could have a shape in it, and twenty minutes at a stove has never once been time taken from anything. The Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen with somebody who has been calling it a bother, and Luke 12:6 treats the smallest and cheapest thing as fully counted.

What tonight is, for one

So here is the assignment. Cook one thing tonight for yourself alone, and eat it sitting down at the table.

Tonight. One thing. One pan. Keep it plain: eggs with something in them. Rice with an egg on it. Something in a pan that ends up on toast. Do not go out and get anything, do not make extra for tomorrow, and do not cook the thing you would make if somebody were coming.

It may not be good. That is expected, and it is information about a first attempt rather than about you, and there is nobody to apologize to.

You are cooking for the person who is actually eating, and a meal made for one has never once been a smaller version of a real one. Luke 12:6 counts the one nobody bothered to price, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that stove with a woman making dinner for herself.

Then the second half, which is the one that does the work. Lay the table. One place, properly, with the plate and the cutlery and a glass of something, and sit at it with the television off for as long as it takes to eat. Not the chair. Not the tray. The table, laid, for one. A laid table for one person is not a sad thing, and the idea that it is has been costing you about three hundred evenings a year.

You are laying a table for somebody who is genuinely there, and one place set properly has never once been a lesser table than four. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with a plate and one chair, and Luke 12:6 refuses to let the smallest one go uncounted.