I Eat Standing Over the Sink

Tonight we are making a skillet of spiced rice with an egg on top and a spoon of yogurt, and it is one pan and about twenty five minutes.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Slice one onion thin and fry it in a good amount of oil over medium heat for twelve minutes, past the point where you would normally stop, until it is deep brown and sweet. Lift half of it out and salt it. Into the pot, add a cup of rice, a big spoon of cumin, a pinch of cinnamon and plenty of salt, and stir it in the oil for a minute. Pour in two cups of water, bring it up, lid on, lowest heat, eighteen minutes, do not lift it. Rest it off the heat for five. Meanwhile fry an egg in a little oil until the white is completely set and firm and the edges are brown and lacy. Put the rice on a plate, the egg on top, a spoon of yogurt beside it, and the reserved onions over everything. It feeds one person properly with some left, and it costs about a dollar.

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

It is where you eat.

You stand at the sink. Not always, but most of the time, and increasingly. The logic is completely sound: nothing to carry, nothing to lay, no dishes afterward, and the whole thing is over in four minutes.

And somewhere in the last year or so, without any decision being made, eating stopped being a thing you do and became a thing you get finished.

The host who stood while his guests ate

There is a scene in Genesis that has a strange detail in it, and the detail is the whole reason I am bringing it here.

And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat. (Genesis 18:8, King James Version)

Abraham stands. His guests sit. He has cooked an enormous amount of food at short notice and he serves it and then he stands beside them while they eat, because that is what a host did.

And it is worth noticing who those guests were, and what happened at that table, and that the entire conversation which changed the rest of his life happened while people were sitting down to a meal he had made.

Standing is what a host does for guests. It is not what a person is supposed to do with their own dinner, every night, in an empty house.

You are not a servant in your own kitchen, and God has never once handed somebody a meal and expected them to eat it standing up alone. Genesis 18:8 has a host standing so that his guests could sit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that difference off a page and puts it into a kitchen at seven in the evening.

You have been treating yourself as staff, and heaven has never once agreed with that arrangement. It is written that he stood by them under the tree and they did eat, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the onions are going brown.

What the sink is actually costing

Now let me name the price, because the logic of standing is genuinely good and the cost is genuinely hidden.

Eating at the sink saves about four minutes and one plate. That is the whole benefit, and it is real.

What it costs is the difference between having a meal and disposing of food. And that difference is not sentimental. Sitting down changes how much a person tastes, how much they notice, how long the evening feels, and whether the day has an end in it.

You are worth a chair and a laid place, and God has never once measured out a smaller dignity for a household of one. The same Spirit who breathed Genesis 18:8 is in this room, and the written word there has a host stand precisely so that his guests could sit and eat.

A person who eats standing up every night has a day that never quite closes. There is no punctuation in it. It goes from work straight to whatever comes after, and the meal, which is the one natural full stop available, gets skipped over.

Eating at a sink is not a verdict on how much a person is worth feeding.

You are worth a chair, and God has never once measured out a smaller dignity for a household of one. The passage puts sitting and eating together as what guests are given, and the Spirit of God is the one who moves a person from the staff side of a kitchen to the table side of it.

You have been getting through your evenings rather than having them, and nobody has noticed because there is nobody there. Genesis 18 is a chapter where an enormous thing happens at an ordinary meal, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a table from becoming a counter.

Lay a place for one and make it look laid

Here is the practical part, and there is one specific instruction in it that matters more than it sounds.

Lay the table. For one. Properly.

A mat or a cloth, a real plate rather than a bowl held in one hand, a glass with something in it, the fork on the correct side because it costs nothing. Put the food on the plate in the kitchen and carry it to the table rather than eating where it was cooked.

The reason this works is not that it is nicer. It is that a laid place is a signal that somebody was expected, and when a person lays a place for themselves they are, in a very small physical way, saying that they counted as somebody who was expected.

That is four extra minutes and one extra plate, which is exactly what standing at the sink was saving.

You are the guest at this table tonight, and God has never once thought a table for one was a table pretending. Genesis 18:8 has a meal laid out with care for whoever came, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a laid place for one person an honest thing rather than an act.