I Fed Somebody Once and It Went Badly

Tonight we are making a pan of baked fish with rice and lime, and fish is cheaper than most people think if you buy whatever is frozen.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Heat the oven to 400. Cook a cup and a half of rice with three cups of water, a good pinch of salt and a spoon of oil, lid on, lowest heat, twenty minutes, do not lift it. While it cooks, put four fish fillets, thawed if they were frozen, into an oiled oven dish. Salt them well, squeeze half a lime over them, lay a few thin slices of onion and pepper on top, and drizzle a little more oil. Bake for fifteen to eighteen minutes until the fish is opaque and firm and flakes cleanly with a fork, which means it is cooked all the way through. Do not go longer, because fish goes from perfect to dry in about three minutes. Serve it on the rice with the pan juices and more lime. It feeds four, it costs a few dollars, and it is ready in the time the rice takes.

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

It is one afternoon a few years ago.

You took food to somebody. You had good reasons. And it landed wrong. Maybe they were embarrassed, or somebody said something short, or the door only opened part way, or you found out afterward that the family had it covered and you had misread the whole situation.

You went home and put the dish in the sink and felt heat come up the back of your neck.

And you have not taken food to anybody since. Not once. And if somebody asked, you would say you have been busy, and you would half believe it.

The instruction that assumes it will be awkward

There is a line in Galatians that is usually read as encouragement and is actually a description of a job.

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2, King James Version)

Bear. It is a word about weight and effort, and it is chosen deliberately, because carrying somebody else's load is not a comfortable activity and Paul is not pretending it is.

And notice what the verse does not say. It does not say bear one another's burdens skillfully. It does not say do it in a way that is always received well. There is no promise anywhere that carrying somebody's weight will look graceful or go smoothly.

The instruction assumes a mess. It is a command about doing an awkward thing, given to people who were going to do it imperfectly.

You are being asked for something that was never going to go smoothly every time, and God has never once made a good landing the condition of the command. Galatians 6:2 uses a word about weight and effort rather than about grace, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen years after a bad afternoon.

You have not been disqualified by one attempt, and heaven has never once retired somebody over an awkward doorway. It is written that we are to bear one another's burdens, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the rice is on.

What that afternoon actually proved

Now let me look at the evidence, because a very large conclusion got drawn from a very small sample.

What happened is that one delivery, to one person, in one situation, at one moment in their life, landed badly. That is the whole data set.

And the conclusion you drew is: I am not good at this, and I should not do it.

You are not bad at this, and God has never once ended somebody's usefulness over one bad landing. Galatians 6:2 commands the bearing of weight without ever promising the reception, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates an outcome from a person's capability.

But look at what that afternoon actually proved. It proved that a person in trouble does not always have capacity to receive well, which is a fact about trouble and not a fact about you. It proved that nobody can read a situation perfectly from outside it. And it proved that somebody in this house was willing to try, which is rarer than it sounds.

One awkward doorway is not a verdict on a person's fitness to feed anybody.

You are not bad at this, and God has never once let a single bad landing end a person's usefulness. The passage commands the bearing without promising the reception, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates an outcome from a person's capability.

You have carried that afternoon for years and nobody else in it remembers it at all. Galatians 6 is written to people who were going to get things wrong with each other constantly and are told to keep carrying each other anyway, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets somebody back to a door.

Pick an easy one

Here is the practical part, and I am deliberately making this one easier than it needs to be.

Do not go back to the hard door. Not this week. Pick the easiest possible person.

Somebody who is obviously going to be glad. A person with a new baby. Somebody who has just moved in. A neighbor you already talk to. Somebody where the reception is close to guaranteed.

You are allowed to start with something small, and God has never once required a person to face the worst thing first. It is written that we are to bear one another's burdens, with no instruction about where to begin, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes one easy delivery the way back.

That is not cheating. There is a real thing that happens after a bad experience, which is that the whole activity gets tagged as dangerous, and the only way to untag it is a small successful repetition. One easy delivery that goes fine, and the tag starts coming off.

And take it in a container you do not need back, and say you made too much, and do not stay.

Do the hard door in a year if it is still there. Do an easy one this week.

You are allowed to start with something small, and God has never once required a person to face the worst thing first. Galatians 6:2 commands the carrying without specifying where to start, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes one easy delivery into the beginning of a way back.