Everybody Takes A Plate Away

Four plates, and four directions.

You cook. Every evening, properly, from actual food, and it is good and everybody says so on the way past.

And then they go. One upstairs, one to the other room, one out, and the last one stands in the doorway saying something while eating, and then that one goes too.

And you stand in a kitchen with a pan and a table nobody sat at.

It takes about ninety seconds for a house to empty like that. You have timed it without meaning to.

And there is nothing to complain about, which is half the difficulty. Nobody is rude. Everybody is grateful, genuinely, and they say so. The food is eaten and appreciated and it happens in four separate rooms.

So the thing you actually wanted, which was never the cooking, has not happened in a long time.

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

Nothing here is going to ask you to get the whole household round that table.

That is the campaign, and campaigns about family dinners are how a woman ends up adding enforcement to a job that already includes the cooking. What follows is smaller and it does not require anybody in that house to agree to anything.

Thou preparest a table before me

There is a line in the twenty third psalm that is usually read past, and the verb in it is the one that matters.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. (Psalm 23:5, King James Version)

Thou preparest a table.

Somebody lays it. That is what the verb means and it is the only thing happening in the first half of that line: a table gets prepared, by somebody, for somebody.

And notice who does it. Not the person at the table. The whole psalm is God doing things for a person who is being led and fed and restored, and the laying is one of them.

You are somebody a table gets laid for rather than only somebody who lays one, and a woman who feeds a household has never once been outside that line. Psalm 23:5 has the table prepared by somebody else entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman standing in a kitchen after ninety seconds.

And look at the conditions it happens in.

In the presence of mine enemies. Which is to say the circumstances are not good, and nothing has been resolved, and the table is laid anyway, in the middle of a situation that has not improved.

The laying is not a reward for things having gone well. It happens while they have not.

You have a table that gets laid in unresolved conditions, and a house that has not changed has never once been the thing that had to change first. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has timed how long a house takes to empty, and Psalm 23:5 lays the table in the presence of enemies rather than after they leave.

The laying is the thing

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction, and it is the hinge of this article.

The table has been treated as something that either gets used or does not, and the using belongs to other people, and therefore the whole business is out of your hands.

That is not what the verse describes. In the psalm, the preparing is the act. It is complete in itself. It happens before anybody sits and it is not conditional on anybody arriving, and the line says nothing at all about attendance.

Which means the one part of this that is genuinely yours is the part you stopped doing, because it seemed pointless.

You have been holding the one part that is actually yours, and a table laid before anybody arrives has never once depended on who does. Psalm 23:5 makes the preparing the act and says nothing about attendance, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman who stopped laying it because nobody sat.

And here is the second half, which is the one that costs something to say. In all of this, you have not eaten.

Four plates go in four directions and the person who made all four is standing at a counter. That has been the arrangement for years and nobody in that house has noticed, because a woman who does not sit down is invisible in exactly the way a woman who does is not.

And that is the part that can change tonight without anybody's cooperation.

You have been the one person in that house without a chair, and a woman who fed four people has never once been the one who should eat standing up. The Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen with a pan and a woman on her feet, and Psalm 23:5 puts somebody at a prepared table rather than beside it.

What tonight is, at that table

So here is the assignment. Lay the table tonight and eat one meal at it with whoever is in the house.

Lay it before you serve anything. Not after, not as a suggestion, and do not call it a change. Places, plates, cutlery, a glass each, for however many people live there.

And then serve, and let people do what they do. Some will take a plate. Possibly all of them will, the first few times, and that is expected and it is not the measure of anything.

You are laying it before anybody decides rather than after, and a table set in advance has never once been a request anybody had to answer. Psalm 23:5 has the preparing done before anybody is seated, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen with a woman laying four places at half past six.

Then the part that does the work, and it is the whole of this article and the whole of this site: sit down and eat yours at it.

Whoever else is there or is not. If one of them stays, that is two of you and that is a table with people at it. If nobody stays, then it is one, and one woman sitting at a laid table she prepared herself is exactly what that verse describes and it is not a rehearsal for a better evening.

You are sitting at it rather than waiting to see who does, and a woman at a table she laid herself has never once been the wrong number for it. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with a plate and a chair pulled in, and Psalm 23:5 seats one person at a prepared table in the middle of everything unresolved.