I Will Learn When I Have A Real Kitchen

The plan is that you will learn later.

Not never. You are not one of those people who says they will never cook. You are one of the people who has a genuine and reasonable intention to learn, and a condition attached to it, and the condition is the room.

Because look at it. Two burners, one of which is temperamental. Counter space roughly the width of a laptop. A cupboard that is also where the cleaning things live. A sink you cannot put a large pan in.

Nobody could cook properly in there. That is not an excuse, that is a description.

So when you have a real kitchen, you will learn. And you can picture that kitchen with some precision, and in the picture you are relaxed and there is light coming in, and you are the sort of person who has herbs.

Here is the quiet part. That kitchen is about four years away on current form, and the version of you who lives in it has never cooked either, because he has been waiting for the room.

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

Nobody in this article thinks you should already know how to do this.

There is no age at which not knowing becomes shameful, and nobody is going to hint at one in a kind voice. What is worth looking at is not the gap in your skills. It is the condition you attached, because that condition is doing all the work and it is wearing the clothes of a reasonable plan.

Who hath despised the day of small things

There is a line in Zechariah spoken over a building project that looked embarrassing next to what people remembered.

For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth. (Zechariah 4:10, King James Version)

Who hath despised the day of small things.

It is a question with an edge on it. Somebody had been looking at the beginning of a thing and comparing it, unfavorably, to a finished version that existed only in memory, and the verse does not gently encourage them. It asks who they think they are.

And the answer, in your case, is you. You have been despising a day of small things, and the small thing being despised is a kitchen with two burners in it.

You are standing in a day of small things rather than a day of no things, and a room somebody would not photograph has never once been a reason nothing can begin in it. Zechariah 4:10 asks who has despised the small beginning and answers with rejoicing rather than apology, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody looking at two burners and deciding they do not count.

And look at what the small thing turns out to be in the verse.

A plummet in a hand. A line with a weight on the end of it, held by a man, checking whether a wall is straight. That is the whole tool. It is not a cathedral and it is not a vision, and the eyes of the Lord are said to be running to and fro through the whole earth and they are apparently on that.

You have the attention of God on a small unimpressive beginning, and a plummet in a hand has never once been beneath the notice of heaven. The Spirit of God is the one watching somebody put a pan on a temperamental burner, and Zechariah 4:10 puts the eyes of the Lord on a man with a builder's line rather than on the finished building.

The room was never the condition

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction. The condition is not a plan, it is a postponement with a reason attached, and the reason is good enough that nobody has ever argued with it.

Test it like this. Suppose the good kitchen arrived tomorrow, fully equipped, light coming in, the whole picture. What would happen on the first evening?

You would stand in it. And the question of what to do with an onion would be exactly as open as it is tonight, and the room would not answer it, and the postponement would need a new condition, and it would find one within a week. That is not a criticism. It is just what conditions do when the thing underneath them has not moved.

What is actually missing is not counter space. It is one evening of doing it badly, and that evening is available in the kitchen you already have, tonight, for free.

You were never waiting on a room, and a kitchen with two burners has never once been the thing standing between anybody and their first meal. Zechariah 4:10 refuses to let a small beginning be despised, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with somebody who has been holding an evening hostage to a floor plan.

And here is a thing worth knowing about small kitchens specifically.

One pan, two burners and no counter is not a handicap for a beginner. It is a constraint, and constraints are how people learn, because there are fewer decisions and fewer of them can go wrong. The big kitchen in your head would give you nine more choices on an evening when you do not want any.

You have been handed fewer decisions rather than fewer options, and a small room has never once taught a beginner less than a large one. The Spirit of God is the one in that narrow kitchen tonight with somebody who is about to find it is enough, and Zechariah 4:10 treats the modest stage as the one worth rejoicing over.

What tonight looks like in the kitchen you have

So here is the assignment. Cook one thing tonight in the kitchen you actually have, and eat it sitting down.

Tonight. One thing. One burner, the reliable one. Keep it plain: rice with an egg on it. Pasta with butter and cheese and pepper. Something in a pan with an onion that ends on toast. Do not go out and get anything and do not clear the counter first, because clearing the counter is a way of not starting.

It may not be good. That is expected, and it is information about a first attempt rather than about the room or about you.

Then the second half, which is the one that does the work. Eat it sitting down, on a plate, wherever sitting down is possible in that place. On a chair, on the edge of a bed, at a desk with the screen off. Sitting counts. Standing at the counter is how a person eats something that does not count.

You are making an evening real by sitting down with it, and a small room has never once disqualified a meal from being a meal. Zechariah 4:10 will not let a small beginning be despised by anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one with somebody eating rice off a plate in a narrow kitchen.