The Same Thing Every Thursday

Tonight we are making the pot of spiced chicken and rice, and it is Thursday, and that is exactly the point.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Brown four chicken thighs skin down in oil in a wide pot for six minutes, then take them out. Cook one sliced onion in that fat for eight minutes with salt, then two cloves of chopped garlic, a big spoon of cumin, a spoon of paprika and a pinch of cinnamon for one minute. Add a cup and a half of rice and coat every grain. Pour in three cups of hot water or broth, salt it properly, and put the chicken back on top skin up. Bring it to a bubble, lid on, lowest heat, twenty five minutes without lifting it, then five off the heat still covered. Check the chicken is cooked all the way through with no pink at the bone. Lemon over the whole pot and parsley if there is any. It feeds five, it costs a few dollars, and the bottom of the pot is the best part.

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

It is what you said as you put it down.

Something like: it is this again, sorry. Or: I know, I know, Thursday. You said it lightly and nobody responded, because nobody in that room had said anything, and there was nothing to respond to.

You apologized to an empty accusation. Nobody had made it. And then you sat down and ate a genuinely good meal with a small sour thing in your chest that you put there yourself.

And it has been three years of Thursdays, and somewhere in those three years the rhythm turned from a thing you had into a thing you were slightly ashamed of.

The verse where God is the one repeating Himself

There is a line in Psalm 65 that is worth reading with a calendar in mind.

Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness. (Psalm 65:11, King James Version)

The year. Not this year. The year, as a shape, as the thing that comes round again, and God is described as crowning it.

And He does it every single time. The same seasons in the same order with the same rains at the same point, for thousands of years, and nowhere in Scripture does anybody suggest that God should mix it up a little or that the repetition is a poverty of imagination.

The repetition is the provision. A thing that arrives reliably is worth more than a thing that arrives impressively, and every farmer who has ever lived knows that.

You are keeping a rhythm and not failing at variety, and God has never once been bored by a thing He does every year. Psalm 65:11 has God crowning the same returning year and calls it goodness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen on a Thursday.

You have not run out of anything, and heaven has never once counted reliability as a shortage. It is written that Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the spices are going in the oil.

Who taught you to apologize for it

Now let me ask about the apology, because I think it was learned somewhere and it did not come from that table.

Nobody at that table complained. If they had, you would remember it precisely, because people remember complaints about their cooking for decades.

So where did it come from? Usually from the outside. A world that talks about food as novelty, as something to be photographed and varied and improved. And a person who cooks the same good thing every Thursday starts to feel, against that background, like somebody who is not trying.

You are not lacking imagination, and God has never once treated faithfulness as a failure to innovate. Psalm 65:11 praises a season for returning exactly as it always has, which is the written word and not a compliment I invented, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an apology out of a man's mouth.

But your household is not that audience. Your household has a Thursday, and they know what Thursday smells like, and one of them will one day describe that smell to somebody in another city and be unable to explain why it matters.

A repeated dish is not a verdict on the person who cooks it.

You are not lacking imagination, and God has never once treated faithfulness as a failure to innovate. The passage praises the return of a season rather than its variation, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the apology out of a man's mouth before he puts the pot down.

You have been building something in those three years that nobody can see yet. Psalm 65 is about a reliable God in a reliable year, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary Thursday into a load bearing thing.

Put it down without a word

Here is the practical part, and it is one sentence long, and the difficulty is entirely in not saying something.

Put the pot on the table and say nothing about it.

No apology, no joke about Thursday, no preemptive acknowledgment that this is the same thing again. Put it down, sit down, and start eating.

You are serving something worth having, and a reliable table has never once needed a disclaimer in front of it. The Spirit of God is not quiet about this: Psalm 65 crowns the year for coming round the same way, and He is saying it over a Thursday pot tonight.

And here is what to watch for, because it is worth watching. The apology is not for them. It is a way of getting in front of a criticism that has never once been made, and getting in front of criticism is exhausting and it is a habit and it can be dropped in one evening.

The silence will feel strange the first time. Let it be strange. Then pass somebody the lemon.

You are allowed to serve it without a disclaimer, and God has never once required a person to apologize for what He provided. Psalm 65:11 has provision arriving in a pattern and being crowned for it, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an unapologetic pot on a table an ordinary act of confidence.