It Is Only Me So Why Lay It

One person is not worth the cloth.

You have never said that out loud in those words, but it is the sentence, and it has been running for long enough that the table in that room now holds keys and nothing else.

The logic is unarguable. Laying a table is an act of preparation for people arriving. There are no people arriving. Preparing a surface for an audience of one who is already in the room is, when you look at it directly, slightly absurd.

So it is a plate, carried from the kitchen, eaten somewhere comfortable, and that is a perfectly reasonable way to have dinner and it has been going on for years.

And every so often, usually when somebody else is coming over, you lay it, and the room is different for an evening and you notice, and then it goes back.

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

Nothing here is going to tell you that eating alone is sad.

There is nothing wrong with a man having his dinner in a chair and any article that opens by pitying you is worthless for the rest of it. What follows is one specific question, which is who the laying is actually for, because you have assumed an answer to that and the assumption has never been examined.

Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy

There is a line in Ecclesiastes that gives an instruction about ordinary food, and the striking thing is who it is addressed to.

Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. (Ecclesiastes 9:7, King James Version)

Go thy way, eat thy bread.

Thy way. Thy bread. Every pronoun in that sentence is singular, and it is spoken to one person about their own food, and there is no company mentioned anywhere in it.

And the instruction is not eat. It is eat with joy, which is a description of how rather than whether, and that whole clause is aimed at a person on their own.

You are being spoken to as one person about one person's bread, and a meal with nobody else at it has never once been outside what that verse is describing. Ecclesiastes 9:7 uses the singular throughout and mentions no company at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man whose table holds keys.

And look at the reason given at the end.

For God now accepteth thy works. The joy is not manufactured and it is not a mood somebody works up. It rests on something already settled, and the word now is doing a great deal: already, currently, not pending.

You have something already settled rather than a mood to produce, and joy in that verse has never once had to be generated by the person eating. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has been doing arithmetic about a cloth, and Ecclesiastes 9:7 grounds the eating in an acceptance already given.

Who the laying is for

Here is the practical half, and it is the one question this article exists to ask.

The laying has been assumed to be for guests. That is the assumption, and it is why a man alone does not do it, and it has never once been tested against your own experience.

So test it. Think about the evenings when you did lay it, because somebody was coming. Now discount the person entirely and think only about the room.

It was different. You said so yourself. And the difference arrived before anybody rang the bell, while you were the only one in the house, which means at least some of what a laid table does happens to whoever is standing in the room rather than to whoever walks into it.

You were laying it for guests and getting something yourself, and a room that changed before anybody arrived has never once been changed by the guest. Ecclesiastes 9:7 speaks to one person about their own bread and their own joy, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man who has noticed something and not counted it.

And here is the second half, which is the part that has kept this in place, and it is a word rather than an idea. Worth.

One person is not worth the cloth. That sentence contains a judgment about value, and it has been getting applied to a table when it lands on a person, and nobody would say it about anybody else. If your brother were living alone in that house, you would not think a table was wasted on him.

The sentence is not about tables. It has been about you, quietly, for years.

You have been applying a word about worth to a piece of furniture, and a judgment you would refuse for anybody else has never once been fair on yourself. The Spirit of God is the one in that room with a man who would not say it about his brother, and Ecclesiastes 9:7 grounds the whole instruction in an acceptance already settled.

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.

Which is one. Lay one place, properly: the plate, the cutlery, a glass of something, and put the keys somewhere else.

And do not improve the food because the table is laid. The point of tonight is not that a laid table deserves a better dinner, which is the way this quietly turns into a project. Whatever you were going to eat, eat that, at the table, on a plate.

You are laying it for the food you were already having, and a table set for an ordinary dinner has never once needed a better dinner to justify it. Ecclesiastes 9:7 tells a single person to eat their own ordinary bread, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room with a man moving keys off a table.

Then the part that does the work, and it is one instruction: notice the room. That is genuinely the assignment. Sit down, eat, and pay attention to what the room is like, because you already know it is different and you have been filing that under something to do with guests for years.

Whoever is in that house tonight is enough, and tonight that is you, and one man at a laid table is not a rehearsal for a better evening with more people in it.

You are the one this evening is for rather than a stand in for company, and a man at his own laid table has never once been an audience of nobody. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with one plate and one chair, and Ecclesiastes 9:7 addresses one person and never once mentions anybody else.