They Ate Standing Up and Left

Tonight we are making smothered chicken and rice, and the gravy is the whole reason to do it.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Salt and pepper four chicken thighs and dust them with flour. Brown them hard in oil in a heavy pan, about five minutes a side, and take them out. In the same pan cook a sliced onion for eight minutes until deeply soft, add two chopped cloves of garlic for a minute, then sprinkle in two spoons of flour and stir it around for a minute. Pour in two cups of broth slowly, scraping the bottom, until it thickens into gravy. Put the chicken back in, lid on, lowest heat, thirty five minutes, until it is falling apart and cooked all the way through with no pink at the bone. Serve it over rice with the gravy spooned over everything. It feeds four, it costs a few dollars, and it is one of those dishes people remember from a house.

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

It is that they ate it standing up.

You cooked for two hours. It was good, and everybody said so, and everybody meant it. And they ate it leaning against the counter, and one of them had it in a bowl on the way out the door, and one of them took the plate into another room, and the whole thing was over in about nine minutes.

And nobody did anything wrong. That is what makes it so hard to say out loud. There is nothing to complain about. And you are standing in a kitchen scraping plates and feeling something you cannot name, and it is worse than if nobody had come home at all.

The meal God commanded people to eat standing

There is an instruction in Exodus that is going to sound strange in this article, and stay with it.

And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD'S passover. (Exodus 12:11, King James Version)

Read the posture. Dressed to leave. Shoes on. Stick in hand. Eaten fast.

That is the most important meal in the entire Old Testament and God's instruction was to eat it standing up, in a hurry, on the way out. It was not a lesser meal for being eaten that way. It was the meal.

Which does not mean a family should always eat like that. It means that heaven does not measure a meal by the posture of the people eating it, and that a plate eaten fast at a counter has not been downgraded by God, however it felt to the person who cooked it.

You have made a real meal tonight, and God has never once graded a dinner by whether anybody sat down for it. Exodus 12:11 has the most significant meal in the book commanded to be eaten standing and in haste, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen at half past seven.

You have not been slighted in heaven's accounting, and there is no ledger where a fast meal counts for less. It is written that they ate it with their shoes on and their staff in hand, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the gravy is thickening.

What you were actually hoping for

Now let me name the thing you cannot name, because I think it is simple and it is not what you fear it is.

It was not about being thanked. The thanks came. It was not about the food being praised. It was praised.

It was the twenty minutes. The part where everybody is in one place, sitting, not going anywhere, and there is a conversation that only happens at a table. That is the thing the cooking was buying, and the food was the ticket price, and the event did not happen.

You were hoping for something good and ordinary, and wanting twenty minutes with the people you feed has never once been too much to ask. Exodus 12:11 gathers a whole household around one meal on one night, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary table the thing worth wanting.

That is why an empty table would have hurt less. An empty table is a disappointment. A table nobody sat at is a near miss, and near misses are worse.

Nine minutes at a counter is not a verdict on how much a family loves the person who cooked.

You are not asking for too much, and God has never once called a person needy for wanting twenty minutes with the people they feed. The passage sets a whole nation eating together in one posture on one night rather than each in their own corner, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a rushed evening from a family's love.

You have been buying something with all that cooking that nobody knew was for sale. Exodus 12 is a chapter about a household gathered around one meal, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person see what they were actually reaching for.

Ask for the eleven minutes

Here is the practical part, and it is the one thing I would ask of you.

Ask for it. Out loud, before the food goes on the table, in a completely normal voice: I would like everybody at the table for ten minutes tonight, and then you can go.

Not a rule. Not a speech about family dinners. Not an announcement that things are going to change around here. Just a request, with a number attached, and an explicit end to it.

You are able to ask out loud, and God has never once expected a person to be understood without speaking. Scripture puts it plainly in Exodus 12, and the Holy Spirit carries it further than a page can: a household was gathered by an instruction given in words rather than by anybody guessing.

The number is what makes it possible. Nobody can commit to a vague expectation of togetherness at seven in the evening. Anybody can do ten minutes.

And here is the thing nobody in the house knows: they did not sit down because nobody asked them to. That is genuinely most of it. Not indifference. Nobody said the words.

You are allowed to ask for what you have been silently hoping for, and God has never once required a person to be understood without speaking. Exodus 12:11 has an instruction given plainly rather than left for people to intuit, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a plain request possible at a kitchen counter.