I Apologize Before Anyone Tastes It

Tonight we are making a ground beef and potato bake, and the top is the reason anybody makes this.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Boil five or six peeled potatoes in salted water for twenty minutes until a knife goes through easily, then drain and mash them with a good lump of butter, a splash of milk and plenty of salt. While they boil, brown a pound of ground beef in a wide pan until it is cooked all the way through with no pink left, then add a chopped onion and two chopped carrots and cook for eight minutes. Stir in two spoons of flour and a spoon of tomato paste for a minute, then pour in a cup and a half of broth and let it thicken. Salt it well. Tip that into an oven dish, spread the mash over the top, drag a fork across it so there are ridges, and bake at 400 for twenty five minutes until the ridges go brown and the whole thing is bubbling at the edges. It feeds six, it costs a few dollars, and the ridges are not decoration, they are the crisp part.

Now, the reason I am writing is not the beef.

It is what you say when you put it down.

Something like: it is nothing special. Or: I did not have much to work with. Or: sorry, it is a bit dry, I left it in too long.

Every night. Before anybody has picked up a fork. And you do not really hear yourself doing it any more, and neither does anybody else, because it has been going on so long that it is simply the sound of dinner arriving in your house.

And here is what has happened without anybody deciding it. Your family has learned that food comes with a disclaimer, and one of them will do it in their own kitchen in fifteen years and will not know where they got it.

The verse that puts thanks over an ordinary plate

There is a line in Romans about food that is doing something quietly enormous.

He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. (Romans 14:6, King James Version)

Paul is settling an argument about what people were allowed to eat, and his resolution is not a ruling about food. It is that both sides give thanks.

Which means the thing that makes a meal right is not what is on the plate. It is the direction a person faces when they put it down.

And notice that thanks and apology cannot occupy the same sentence. One of them says this is from God and it is good. The other says please do not judge this. They are two different postures over the same pan of food.

You are able to face a different direction over that dish, and God has never once asked anybody to apologize for what they were about to thank Him for. Romans 14:6 settles a food argument by pointing at thanksgiving rather than at the contents of a plate, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen at six in the evening.

You have not been serving anything that needed a disclaimer, and heaven has never once received a meal with an apology attached. It is written that he that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the potatoes are boiling.

The apology is not about the food

Now let me name what the sentence is actually doing, because it is not about the bake.

An apology said before anybody tastes something is a defensive move. It gets in front of a criticism that has not been made, so that if the criticism comes it lands on ground that was already conceded.

And it works, in a small sad way. Nobody can say the potatoes were dry if you said it first.

You are not serving anything that needs a defense, and God has never once made a person justify what they set in front of people. The same Spirit who breathed Romans 14:6 is in this kitchen, and the written word there settles the whole matter on who is being thanked rather than on what is on the plate.

But it costs three things. It makes you the first person to run your own food down, which nobody else in the house was going to do. It puts everybody at that table in the position of having to reassure you before they can eat. And it teaches children that this is what a person says when they have made something.

An apology at the table is not a verdict on the cooking, and it never comes from the cooking.

You are not serving anything that requires a defense, and God has never once made a person justify what they set in front of people. The passage settles the whole matter on the direction of thanks rather than on the quality of the food, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a defensive sentence out of a woman's mouth.

You have been the harshest voice at your own table for years, and no one else in that room ever joined in. Romans 14 is written to people who were anxious about food and were being told to stop, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the same in an ordinary kitchen.

Swap the sentence

Here is the practical part, and it is one sentence traded for another.

Do not simply stop apologizing. A habit that automatic does not respond to being suppressed, and you will get halfway through it before you notice, most nights, for a while.

Put something in its place. When the dish goes down, say a short sentence of thanks instead. Out loud, in a normal voice, six or seven words. Something like: thank You, Lord, for this, and for these people.

You have seven words in you that can replace twenty years, and God has never once needed a long procedure to change a room. Romans 14:6 puts thanksgiving at the center of an argument about food, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a short sentence take the place of a long habit.

That works better than silence for two reasons. It occupies the exact moment the apology used to occupy, so there is no gap for the old sentence to fall into. And it faces the whole table in the direction Romans is pointing.

And your children will learn that sentence instead, which is the part that will still be going in forty years.

You are allowed to change what gets said over that table, and God has never once required a person to run themselves down before He would receive a meal. Romans 14:6 resolves an argument by pointing at thanksgiving, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes seven words at a table replace a habit of years.