I Stopped Opening It at All

This morning we are making a pot of oatmeal, and I want to say at the start that this is a real meal and not a lesser one.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Put one part rolled oats and two parts water or milk into a small pot with a good pinch of salt, and salt is not optional here, it is the difference between food and wallpaper paste. Bring it up to a bubble and then turn it down low and stir it now and then for about five minutes until it thickens and goes creamy. Take it off the heat. Then put in whatever sweet thing is in the house. Jam. Honey. A spoon of sugar. Half a banana going brown. Raisins. Whatever is there. If there is butter, a small piece stirred through at the end makes it taste like somebody cared. It costs almost nothing, it takes six minutes, and it will hold a person up for hours.

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

It is that somebody reading this has stopped opening the cupboard.

Not because it is empty. You do not actually know what is in there, and that is the point. At some stage in the last few weeks, opening it and looking became more expensive than being hungry, so you stopped, and you have been eating almost nothing rather than stand in front of it and count.

And you cannot explain that to anybody, because said out loud it sounds unreasonable, and it is not unreasonable at all.

The verse where God does the opening

There is a line in the Psalms about God and hands and food, and it is gentler than people usually read it.

The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. (Psalm 145:15, King James Version)

Look at the direction of that sentence. The waiting is done with the eyes. Not with effort, not with striving, not with a plan. Somebody looks up, and something is given.

And notice the next verse in that psalm says He opens His hand. He is the one who opens. There is a whole psalm here about a God whose posture is open handed, written for people who could not open anything themselves that week.

You are not required to be the one who opens things right now, and God has never once made a person's capacity the condition of being fed. Psalm 145:15 has the eyes doing the waiting and the hand doing the opening, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that difference land on somebody who has run out of capacity.

You have not disqualified yourself by going quiet, and there is nothing in this psalm about deserving the season it names. It is written that He gives them their meat in due season, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is in the room with you this morning.

What is actually behind that door

Let me say what I think is behind the cupboard door, because it is not shelves.

It is a number. And the number is not the problem either. The problem is that the number has a sentence attached to it, and the sentence is about you, and the decision has already been made in advance that opening the door means hearing it again.

So the door stays shut, and you eat nothing, and the hunger is easier to carry than the sentence. That is not irrational. That is a person protecting themselves from something that genuinely hurts, using the only tool available.

But the sentence is a lie, and the shelf is only a shelf. What is in a cupboard is not a verdict on the person standing in front of it. It is a list of what is in a cupboard, and it has no authority to say anything else.

You are not what that shelf says, and the shelf has never once had permission to say anything at all. The passage puts a person's eyes on a God who gives rather than on a store of food, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the sentence off a door and leaves the door standing.

You have been carrying something much heavier than hunger, and nobody has known. Psalm 145 is written for people whose eyes are the only part of them still working, and the Holy Spirit is the one who meets a person at exactly that point.

Why I am asking for six minutes and not a plan

Now I want to be careful, because there is a version of this that would push you further away.

I am not going to tell you to take stock, make a list, plan a week of meals and organize the shelf. That is the correct advice for somebody with capacity, and you do not have capacity this morning, and handing a plan to a person in your state is how a person ends up further under.

So here is the whole ask. Open the door. Take out oats and salt. Close the door. That is the entire assignment, and if you get that far, everything after it is easier because there is a pot going.

Six minutes. Not a system. Not a fresh start. One pot of oatmeal, eaten sitting down.

You are only being asked for one small motion, and God has never once required a strategy before He would meet somebody at a stove. Psalm 145:15 has provision arriving in a due season rather than on a schedule a tired person has to build, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes six minutes possible when a week is not.