The Place I Am Staying Is Not Mine

It is not your kitchen.

That is the sentence, and it is true, and it has been doing an enormous amount of work for longer than you planned.

The pans belong to somebody else. The mugs are not the mugs you would have chosen. There is a whole drawer of things that are not yours and that you have never once opened, and the cupboard you use has your things in a carrier bag because unpacking felt like a statement.

You were going to be here a few weeks. It has been considerably longer than a few weeks.

And in that time you have eaten standing up, out of packets, in a room that has a functioning kitchen in it, because using somebody else's kitchen properly would be settling in, and settling in would be admitting something about how long this is going to last.

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

Nothing here is going to tell you to accept the situation, or to make peace with it, or to treat it as your home.

It is not your home. That is not being argued with. What is worth looking at is a much smaller thing: whether a man has to own a kitchen in order to eat a hot meal in it tonight.

Build ye houses, and dwell in them

There is an instruction in Jeremiah written to people who were not staying, and it is startling in what it asks for.

Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them. (Jeremiah 29:5, King James Version)

Build ye houses, and dwell in them.

These are people in exile. Everybody involved knows it is temporary, it is stated plainly a few verses later, and the instruction is not to make the best of it or to settle for it. It is to build, and to plant, and to eat.

And planting a garden is the striking half, because a garden is slow. Somebody who plants one is doing something that will not pay for months, in a place they intend to leave.

You are allowed to do a slow thing in a temporary place, and a room somebody else owns has never once been a reason to eat standing up in it. Jeremiah 29:5 tells people in exile to build and plant and eat rather than to wait it out, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man who has not unpacked a carrier bag.

And notice the word dwell.

Not occupy. Not survive in. Dwell, which is a word about living in a place properly while being in it, and it is given as an instruction to people whose situation was genuinely not permanent and genuinely not chosen.

The instruction did not require the exile to end first. It came with the exile still on.

You have permission to live properly inside something unfinished, and a situation that has not resolved has never once had to resolve before an evening could be good. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has been waiting to be somewhere else before starting, and Jeremiah 29:5 puts building and eating inside the exile rather than after it.

Not settling in, just eating

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction. Cooking a meal in that kitchen is not settling in, and the two have got welded together in your head, and prying them apart is the whole of tonight.

Settling in would be hanging pictures. Settling in would be buying furniture, or rearranging their cupboards, or moving what is in the drawer that has stayed shut since the day you arrived.

Cooking is none of that. Cooking is using a room for the twenty minutes a person is in it, and then washing a pan and putting it back exactly where it was. It leaves no trace. It is the least permanent thing anybody does in a kitchen.

You were treating a hot meal as a commitment, and twenty minutes with a pan has never once been the same act as moving in. Jeremiah 29:5 has people build and plant in a place they were leaving, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man who has been eating out of packets in a working kitchen.

And here is the part that is worth saying out loud, because it costs something.

Standing up, out of packets, in a room that is not yours, is how a man stops being a person in his own life for a while. It is not about the food. It is about a day that has no point in it where anything is done properly for you by you.

One hot thing on a plate is a small rebellion against that, and it takes twenty minutes, and nobody has to know.

You have twenty minutes tonight that belong to nobody else, and eating properly in a borrowed room has never once been a claim on it. The Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen with somebody getting a pan down that is not his, and Jeremiah 29:5 tells people to eat the fruit of what they plant while still in exile.

What tonight is, in that kitchen

So here is the assignment. Cook one thing in that kitchen tonight, and eat it sitting down at whatever table is there.

Tonight. One thing. One pan, theirs, washed and put back. Keep it plain: eggs with something in them. Rice with an egg on it. Pasta with butter and cheese and pepper. Do not go out and get anything, and use what is in your carrier bag and nothing off their shelves that you would not replace.

It may not be good. That is expected, and it is information about a first attempt rather than about the room or about how long this has gone on.

You are using a room rather than claiming one, and a pan washed and put back has never once left a mark on anything. Jeremiah 29:5 has people eat the fruit of a temporary ground, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that stove with somebody who has not cooked in months.

Then the second half, which is the one that does the work. Eat it sitting down, at whatever table is in that place, on a plate. Not standing. Not in the doorway. Not back in the room with the door closed. Sitting at a table in a house that is not yours is not settling in. It is having one meal like a person, which is the thing that has been missing since you got there.

You are eating like a person rather than getting through an evening, and a borrowed table has never once made a meal count for less. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with a plate and a chair, and Jeremiah 29:5 puts dwelling and eating inside a situation nobody chose.