I Made the Birthday Meal Anyway

Tonight we are making a skillet chicken with potatoes, and a plain cake, and both of them are easier than they sound.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. For the chicken, brown four thighs skin down in a heavy pan for six minutes, lift them out, then cook a sliced onion and a couple of chopped potatoes in the fat for five minutes with salt. Put the chicken back on top, add half a cup of water or broth, lid on, lowest heat, thirty minutes, until the chicken is cooked all the way through with no pink at the bone. For the cake, beat one stick of soft butter with a cup of sugar, then two eggs one at a time, then a teaspoon of vanilla. Fold in a cup and a half of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder and a pinch of salt, alternating with half a cup of milk. Into a greased pan at 350 for thirty five minutes until a knife comes out clean. It feeds four with cake left over, it costs a few dollars, and the cake is better plain than iced.

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

It is that somebody said they did not want it.

You knew the date. You know that person does not do birthdays, and has said so more than once, and said it again this year in a way that was fairly plain.

And you cooked anyway. Not to argue. You cooked because it was the only way you had of saying something, and because the day was going to pass otherwise with nothing marking it at all.

And now there is a table with food on it and a door that stayed shut, and you are standing in a kitchen feeling foolish in a way you would not be able to explain to anybody.

The gentlest description of God pulling somebody in

There is an image in Hosea that is worth reading slowly, because of what it is not.

I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them. (Hosea 11:4, King James Version)

Cords of a man. Bands of love. Not chains and not a summons. And then the last clause, which is the one that matters here: and I laid meat unto them.

He put food down. That is the picture. A people who had turned away, and God's method is described as a yoke lifted off a jaw and a meal set down within reach, and there is no compulsion anywhere in the sentence.

You are doing something God Himself does, and He has never once treated a meal set down as a manipulation. Hosea 11:4 has God draw people with cords of love and lay food in front of them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it in a kitchen on somebody's birthday.

You have not overstepped, and heaven has never once called a plate of food an imposition. It is written that He laid meat unto them, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the chicken is browning.

What the food was actually saying

Now let me name the thing carefully, because there is a version of this that would go wrong.

This was never an attempt to make somebody celebrate. Nobody in that kitchen thought it would. What the cooking was saying is: your birthday is worth marking, and I am not going to let it go past like a Tuesday, and I will not make you do anything about it.

That is a good sentence and it is worth saying, and food is a legitimate way to say it. It is one of the oldest ways there is.

You have said a true thing in the oldest language there is, and a meal has never once needed words attached to it. Hosea 11:4 has God draw people with cords of love and then simply lay food within reach, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a set table into a sentence.

And here is the part that is hard and true at the same time. Saying it does not obligate the other person to receive it. A gift that is declined is still a gift that was given, and it does not become a mistake because it was not taken.

A closed door is not a verdict on the person who cooked.

You are allowed to have said it, and God has never once made the value of a gift depend on whether it was accepted. The passage has God lay food down for people who were actively walking the other way, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a refused kindness from turning into a person's shame.

You have loved somebody in the only language you had available, and there was nothing wrong with the language. Hosea 11 is written about somebody whose people would not come and who did not stop setting food down, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person stand in that same posture without it curdling.

Send it without a note

Here is the practical part, and there is one rule attached to it.

Do not throw it away and do not sit with it. Cut the cake, take a piece yourself, and send the rest.

And send it without a note. No card, no message about how it was made for them, no mention of the day at all. Just food, arriving, with nothing attached.

You are giving without a hook in it, and God has never once handed anybody a meal with terms on the side. The Spirit of God is saying it exactly as Hosea 11 says it: a yoke lifted off a jaw and food laid down, and no compulsion anywhere in the whole sentence.

The reason is simple. Anything you write turns the food into a statement that has to be answered, and that is the exact thing this person cannot do, and it is why the door was shut in the first place. Food with nothing attached is not an argument. It can just be eaten.

That is what makes it a gift instead of a bill.

You are able to give this without a single string on it, and God has never once handed anybody a meal with terms on the side. Hosea 11:4 describes cords of love and a yoke lifted rather than an obligation created, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a plate arrive without a demand inside it.