Up Since Four and Cannot Stand

Tonight we are making tuna melts on toast under the broiler, and the whole point of this one is that almost none of it happens standing up.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Turn the broiler on. Open a can of tuna, drain it, and mix it in a bowl with a couple of spoons of mayonnaise, a squeeze of lemon or a splash of vinegar, salt and a lot of black pepper. If there is half an onion, chop a little of it in. Lay four slices of bread on a tray and toast them under the broiler on one side, about a minute and a half. Turn them over, pile the tuna on the untoasted side, put cheese on top, and slide the tray back under. Watch it, because the broiler goes from perfect to ruined in about forty seconds. When the cheese is bubbling and the edges are dark, it is done and it is hot all the way through. It feeds four, it costs a few dollars, and the only standing involved is two minutes at a tray.

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

It is that somebody reading this got up at four.

Not because of a crisis. Because that is what time the day starts. And it is now six in the evening, and the legs have gone, and there is a particular kind of tiredness that is not in the head at all, it is in the feet and the lower back, and no amount of willingness moves it.

And there is still dinner. And twenty minutes at a stove is genuinely, physically, not available tonight.

The verse for a body that has run out

There is a promise in Isaiah that is very specific about who it is for.

He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. (Isaiah 40:29, King James Version)

Read the two categories. The faint, and the ones who have no might. Not the ones running low. The ones with nothing.

And notice the direction of the verbs. He gives and He increases. Nothing in that line asks the tired person to generate anything first. The strength comes from outside and arrives in a body that had already stopped producing it.

You are the exact category named in that verse, and God has never once required a spent body to make its own strength first. Isaiah 40:29 addresses the faint and the ones with no might by name, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a sentence like that off a page and puts it into a pair of legs at six in the evening.

You have not been left to run on your own supply, and heaven has never once been embarrassed by a person who ran out. It is written that He gives power to the faint, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the broiler is heating.

The kind of tired that willingness does not touch

Let me be careful here, because there is a version of this that would be no help at all.

There is a tiredness that a person can decide their way through. A person can be low, and choose to move, and find that moving helped. That is real and everybody has done it.

This is not that one. This is a body that has been upright for fourteen hours doing physical work, and it has hit a limit that is not moral and not spiritual. It is structural. Blood, muscle, feet. And any counsel that treats it like an attitude problem is simply wrong about what is happening, and it makes a tired person feel like a weak one.

A body that has run out is not a verdict on the person inside it. It is a body reporting accurately.

You are not lacking discipline tonight, and God has never once mistaken a physical limit for a character flaw. The passage names people with no might at all rather than people who could try harder, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a spent body from being read as a weak will.

You have already done a day most people would not attempt. Isaiah 40 is written to a nation that had exhausted itself and stayed exhausted, and the Holy Spirit is the one who meets that condition rather than waiting for it to improve.

Design the meal around the body

Here is the practical part, and it is the reason I chose this dish.

Most cooking assumes a person who can stand. Almost every recipe is written for somebody at a counter for twenty five minutes. So on a night like this the choice looks like a stove or nothing, and nothing usually wins, and then a person feels bad about it on top of everything else.

But there is a third option, and it is the broiler. Two minutes of assembly at a tray, then four minutes where the heat does the work and you sit down. A chair in the kitchen is not a defeat. It is the correct tool for the job tonight.

So pull a chair over. Sit while it toasts. Stand up for the forty seconds when it needs watching. That is the whole physical cost of dinner.

You are allowed to sit down in the middle of cooking, and God has never once measured a meal by how long somebody stood up for it. Isaiah 40:29 has strength arriving as a gift rather than as an achievement, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a chair in a kitchen a sensible thing rather than a shameful one.