I Ate Earlier

Her sister counted, which is the sort of thing her sister does.

Nine times, Denise said, on the phone, in that voice. Nine times this month you have told somebody you already ate.

And Marva laughed, and said something about her sister having too much time, and then she got off the phone and stood in her own kitchen for a bit.

Because it is nine times, or something close to it. She knows the sentence. It comes out of her before she has decided anything, and it comes out warm, and it always works.

Oh, no, I ate earlier.

Her neighbor with the food. Her son's girlfriend with the cake she had clearly made herself. The woman at church who brings things and who has been trying to give Marva something for about four years and has never once managed it. The whole Wednesday crowd, who have stopped offering, which Marva noticed and filed and did not examine.

She is fifty-eight and she has been feeding people since she was nineteen.

It is not modesty and it is not an eating thing. Her sister asked, plainly, because her sister does, and it is genuinely not that.

It is that Marva does not know how to be on the receiving side of a plate. Giving one is easy. Being handed one puts her somewhere she has no practice at all, and after forty years the sentence arrives on its own to get her out of it before anybody notices.

And what she saw in her own kitchen after that phone call is that she says it to God too.

Not in words. She would never. But there is a whole way she has of getting through a service, and the way is to be useful in it, and if anything ever came toward her in that room she would have the sentence ready before it arrived.

Oh, no. I ate earlier.

And you may know that sentence. Yours may be a different one and it may be just as warm, and you may have noticed that people have started to stop offering.

He cooked breakfast for men who had caught nothing

Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it for forty years and it was never yours.

You are not built to give only. You never were. Scripture has Him cooking a meal on a beach for tired men who had nothing to bring, and it is the Holy Spirit, not your usefulness, who does the feeding. Set it down here in the kitchen. It is heavy, and it has been arriving before you have decided anything for four decades.

Now hear the scene, and hear what is already on the fire.

They have been out all night and caught nothing, which is an embarrassing way to come in when fishing is your trade. They see somebody on the shore. It turns out to be Him.

And when they get there, there is a charcoal fire going with fish on it and bread beside it, before a single one of them has landed anything.

Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast."John 21:12

Come and have breakfast.

He is not asking for a contribution. He does invite them to bring some of the fish, which matters and is not nothing, but the fire was already lit and the bread was already there and He did the cooking.

That is Him with people who had failed at their own work and had nothing to offer, and He fed them first and had the conversation afterward.

That breakfast is set for you. Right now, at fifty-eight, in your own kitchen with the phone still warm. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who lit it, and He has never once needed anybody to bring the meal.

Now let me be careful here, because a page like this could do damage and I have no intention of doing any.

Nothing on this page is a comment on how your church does anything or how often. That belongs to your church and it stays exactly where it is, and I am not putting a view about it in your head.

And nothing here says forty years of feeding people was a way of hiding. It was not. You have fed people who were not fed anywhere else and some of them are alive in ways nobody will ever write down, and Scripture honors that and His Spirit was in all of it.

The point is only that a woman with one direction open has half an arrangement, and Scripture puts Him on a beach cooking for people who came in empty. His Spirit is the one who has been holding the plate out at that Wednesday for four years.

Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. You are not proud.

Being handed something puts you somewhere you have never been, and a woman of fifty-eight who has been the strong one since she was nineteen does not have a way of standing there. The sentence is not arrogance. It is a lack of practice with a warm voice on it. His Spirit is not disappointed in you and He has been in that kitchen the whole time.