Thirty Eight And Never From Scratch

You ordered it standing in a kitchen with food in it.

There was rice in that cupboard. There were eggs. There was most of the makings of something, and you stood there with your phone out and ordered instead, and it took about ninety seconds.

And you were slightly aware, the whole ninety seconds, that this was the fourth time this week.

Thirty eight. And you have never once made anything from scratch. Not a thing where you started with raw items and finished with a meal.

You can heat things. You are perfectly competent at the part where a package goes into an oven. But you have never chopped anything and turned it into something else, and if somebody asked you to make a meal for another human being on the spot, you would feel a genuine drop in your chest.

And the worst part is not the food. It is that you cannot say it out loud.

When it comes up, and it comes up more than you would like, you produce something. You say you are terrible at it, in a light voice. You say you live on toast, as a joke. And every version you have is designed to get past the moment without anybody finding out that you are not exaggerating.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical. There is nothing wrong with you.

Nowhere in this article is there any suggestion that a man of thirty eight should already know how to cook. There is no age at which this becomes shameful, and no window that closes, and I am not going to hint at one in a kind voice, which is what most of the people who have tried to help you have done.

You were not taught. That is a fact about your childhood and not a fact about your capacity, and those have been welded together in you for about twenty years.

Who hath made man's mouth

There is an exchange in Exodus where a man explains why he cannot do the thing, and God's answer is not encouragement.

And Moses said unto the LORD, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. (Exodus 4:10, King James Version)

I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since.

Look at how he says it. Neither heretofore, nor since. He is making a case out of his history: I have never been able to do this, and nothing has changed, and there is a track record here. That is your sentence about a kitchen. Not now, not ever, and the length of the record is the proof.

And notice that he is not lying. There is no suggestion in the text that Moses was secretly eloquent and needed a confidence boost. He is describing something real about himself and God does not contradict the description.

You are being answered rather than corrected, and a plain account of what you have never done has never once had to be argued with before God moves. Exodus 4:10 lets a man state his record without contradiction, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody standing in a kitchen with a phone in his hand.

What God does instead is answer a different question. He says: who hath made man's mouth? And then he says, I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.

Two things there, and both matter for you. The first is that the capacity is not being assessed. God does not argue about whether Moses is a good speaker. He points at the fact that mouths are made things, and that the one who made them is the one talking to him, which puts the whole question of what this man is naturally able to do in a completely different frame.

And the second is the word teach. Not: you are better than you think. Teach. Which assumes he does not know yet, and treats not knowing as the ordinary starting position of somebody about to learn something.

You have not knowing treated as a starting position rather than a verdict, and never having been taught has never once been a finding about what you can do. The Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody who has carried that record for twenty years, and Exodus 4:10 has a man state his record plainly and get taught rather than talked round.

Cooking is not a talent

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction. Cooking has been filed in your head as a talent, and it is a skill, and that distinction is doing all of the work.

A talent is something a person has or does not have, distributed at birth, and the people who have it are a different kind of person. A skill is a set of learnable procedures that anybody acquires by doing them badly for a while.

And the talent version is the one that has been running, which is why nothing has started. If it is a talent, then the first attempt is a test. You cook something, it is not good, and that result tells you something permanent about yourself, and now you know. That is an unbearable amount of risk for a Tuesday evening, so ordering is rational.

You were facing a first repetition rather than an examination, and a poor result on an opening attempt has never once told anybody anything permanent. Exodus 4:10 answers a man's whole track record with a promise to teach him, and the Holy Spirit is the one with somebody who has been treating a Tuesday as a test.

If it is a skill, the first attempt is not a test at all. It is the first repetition of a thing that is bad at first for everybody, including every person you know who cooks well, all of whom made a great deal of poor food in their twenties and mostly do not mention it.

And here is what there actually is to learn, which is smaller than it looks. Not two hundred recipes. About six operations: heat a pan, chop an onion, know roughly when something is done, season a thing, boil something, not walk away. That is most of it. Everything else is variations, and nobody starts with the variations.

You are standing at the bottom of about six ordinary movements rather than at the bottom of a mountain, and a short list has never once been the same thing as a gift somebody either has or does not. The Spirit of God is the one with a man who has been pricing a skill as a birthright, and Exodus 4:10 puts the teaching on God's side of the exchange.

Cook one thing tonight and sit down

So here is the assignment, and both halves are the assignment. Cook one thing tonight, however simple, and eat it sitting down.

Tonight. One thing. And make it genuinely simple: eggs, with something in them. Rice with an egg on it. Pasta with butter and cheese and pepper. Something on toast that involved a pan. Do not look up a recipe with eleven items in it, do not go and buy anything, and use what is in that kitchen right now, which is more than you think.

It may not be good. That is fine and it is expected, and it is not information about you. It is information about the fifth minute of a skill.

You are in the fifth minute of something rather than at the end of it, and food that came out badly has never once been a report on the person who made it. Exodus 4:10 answers not knowing with teaching, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that stove with somebody doing this for the first time.

And then the second half, which is the one that does the work: eat it sitting down. At a table, or at least in a chair, with the food on a plate, not standing at the counter with the pan. Standing at the counter is how a person eats something that does not count. It is fuel, taken quickly, with no acknowledgment that anything occurred. And this is the first meal you have ever made, at thirty eight, and it is going to be treated as a meal. And do not tell anybody yet. There is nothing to announce, and announcing it would turn a private ordinary act into a report on your progress.

You are letting it be a real meal rather than fuel, and standing at a counter has never once let anything count. The Spirit of God is the one present with somebody sitting down to eat something he made himself, and Exodus 4:10 answers a man's record with teaching rather than assessment.