I Did the Work the Day Before

Tonight we are making a pot of beef and barley stew, and it is a slow one, and the slowness is the point of it.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Cut a pound of stewing beef into pieces, dry them with a towel, and brown them hard in oil in a heavy pot in two batches so the pan stays hot. Take them out. Cook a chopped onion, two carrots and two sticks of celery in the same pot for eight minutes with salt. Add two cloves of chopped garlic and a spoon of tomato paste for a minute. Put the beef back with six cups of water or broth, a bay leaf, and plenty of salt. Bring it up, then down to the lowest simmer, lid ajar, for an hour and a half. Add three quarters of a cup of pearl barley and cook forty minutes more, until the barley is tender and the beef falls apart and everything is cooked all the way through. Salt again at the end, black pepper, vinegar to finish. It feeds eight, it costs a few dollars, and it is far better on the second day.

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

It is that you did the work the day before.

You went to the store on purpose for it. You chopped in the evening, and put things in containers, and moved the shelf in the refrigerator so the pot would fit. You planned the timings backward from when people were arriving. Some of it you did standing up at ten at night because you wanted the day itself to be unhurried.

And the message came this morning, and it was a good reason, and every hour of yesterday was already spent.

And there is a particular flatness in that which is different from an ordinary disappointment, because the work is not ahead of you where it could be canceled. It is behind you, and it cannot be un-done, and it now has nowhere to land.

The verse about work that nobody saw

There is a line in Hebrews that is specifically about labor that had no audience.

For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. (Hebrews 6:10, King James Version)

Read the strange phrasing. Not unrighteous to forget. It is a double negative on purpose, and it lands harder than a positive would. The writer is saying that forgetting your work would be an injustice, and God does not do injustice, therefore it is not forgotten.

That is a much stronger claim than a promise to remember. It puts the remembering into God's character rather than into His good intentions.

And notice what kind of work it names. Ministering to people. Practical service. Not preaching, not building, not anything with an audience. The kind of work that gets done in a kitchen the night before.

You are not going to lose one hour of yesterday, and God has never once mislaid work that nobody else saw. Hebrews 6:10 makes forgetting a person's labor a thing God's own righteousness prevents, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen the morning after a cancellation.

You have not spent that day on nothing, and heaven has never once needed an audience before it would count something. It is written that God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the beef is browning.

Why this one lands differently

Now let me name why this feels worse than it looks, because the flatness seems out of proportion to something so ordinary.

Most disappointments cost a plan. This one cost a day that is already gone. There is a real difference between losing something not yet done and losing something already finished, and the second one has no remedy in it, because an evening does not come back and an onion cannot be un-chopped.

And there is a second thing. Preparation done in advance is a particular kind of love. It is love with no audience at all, because the person it is for is not in the room while it is happening. Nobody watched that shelf get moved at ten at night.

You have done something real, and work that nobody watched has never once counted for less. It is written that God is not unrighteous to forget your labor of love, which makes the forgetting an impossibility rather than a kindness, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps that record while a person sleeps.

So the cancellation lands on something that was already invisible, and invisible work that comes to nothing feels, for a while, like it did not exist.

A day of unseen preparation is not a verdict on whether a person is worth showing up for.

You are not foolish for having gone to that much trouble, and God has never once counted preparation as wasted because the event moved. The passage names practical unseen service as exactly the thing God will not forget, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that land on a person holding a cutting board.

You have loved somebody in a way nobody watched, and that has always been the highest kind there is. Hebrews 6 is written to people who were tired and needed to know their work had not vanished, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so at the exact hour they doubt it.

Cook it anyway and send it out

Here is the practical part, and there is one temptation to name first.

The temptation is to not cook it. To put everything in the refrigerator, feel flat, and let it slowly turn into a bag of things that get thrown out on Friday. That is what will happen by default, and it converts a disappointment into a waste, which is a second and unnecessary injury.

So cook it. Today. The whole pot, the long way, exactly as planned.

You are finishing something rather than salvaging it, and God has never once let good work go looking for a destination in vain. The same Spirit who breathed Hebrews 6:10 is in this kitchen, and the written word there ties the remembering of a person's work to God's own righteousness.

Then eat a bowl yourself, sitting down, and portion the rest into containers and freeze them. And take one to somebody this week.

Because a pot of beef and barley stew that reaches five people over two weeks has landed exactly where a pot of stew is supposed to land, and the day is no longer hanging.

You are able to finish what you started, and God has never once let good work made in love have nowhere to go. Hebrews 6:10 puts ministering to people in the past tense and the present tense in one sentence, and the Spirit of God is the one who turns a canceled day into five meals on somebody else's week.