Every Birthday Came Off That Stove

Nineteen birthdays.

That is what came off it, and the number arrived while you were disconnecting it, and it stopped you where you were kneeling with a wrench.

Nineteen birthdays, which is every birthday of two children and a good many of the adults, and each one of them a cake that came out of that oven and got carried through to a room with people in it.

And Christmas dinners. And the funeral tea, which was a thing nobody wants to remember and which happened in this kitchen and came off that stove.

And then, immediately after the number arrived, something else arrived with it, and it said: it is an appliance, get on with it.

So there are two things going on at once on a kitchen floor with a wrench, and one of them is an accurate count and the other one is a voice telling a man not to do the counting.

You are counting what a thing did and not making a fuss over an appliance, and remembering what came out of a kitchen has never once been a sentimental act.

Forget not all his benefits

There is a line in the psalms that is a man talking to himself, and the thing he warns himself about is forgetting.

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. (Psalm 103:2, King James Version)

Forget not all his benefits.

The warning is against forgetting. Not against ingratitude in some general sense, and not against a bad attitude. Against forgetting, which is a much more ordinary and much more likely failure.

And notice he is saying it to himself. O my soul. This is a man who knows what he is like, and what he is like is a person who forgets what he has been given unless he deliberately does not.

You are doing the exact thing that psalm has to instruct a man to do, and a person counting what he was given has never once been a person indulging himself. The Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody kneeling on a kitchen floor with a wrench, and Psalm 103:2 makes the forgetting the named risk.

And the word benefits is worth stopping on.

It is a plain accounting word. Benefits are the specific things received, item by item, that can be listed. It is not a word about feelings and it is not a word about atmosphere.

Which means the counting being done on that floor, nineteen birthdays and a funeral tea and a great many Christmases, is exactly the operation the verse describes.

You are making the kind of list that verse is about, and an itemized account of what a thing did has never once been an emotional exercise. The written word uses an accounting word on purpose, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a list a legitimate thing for a man to sit and make.

And all his benefits. All of them. The word all is doing real work there, because the habit is to remember two or three and let the rest go.

You are able to count more than the obvious ones, and a list that includes the ordinary Tuesdays has never once been a longer list than the truth. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a count honest on a kitchen floor, and Psalm 103:2 says all and refuses to let the list stop at the memorable items.

The voice that says get on with it

Something practical, and it is about the second voice.

That voice has a job and the job is useful most of the time. It gets things done. It stops a man standing in a room for forty minutes when there is a wrench in his hand and a delivery at two.

But it is not a truth telling voice. It is a pace keeping voice, and it will interrupt anything, including the things worth thirty seconds.

You are able to tell the difference between a voice that is right and a voice that is fast, and an instinct to get on with it has never once been the same as an assessment of what matters. The written word has a man deliberately instructing himself against a natural habit, and the Spirit of God is the one who slows a man down long enough to count.

Now the practical thing, and it is better than a moment of reflection because it is a thing done with the hands.

Cook one more meal on it before it goes.

Not a special meal. Not a ceremony, which would be embarrassing and would make everybody uncomfortable. Whatever tonight was going to be, cooked on that stove, one last time.

And then eat it at the table rather than standing up or in front of something, which is the whole of the difference.

You are able to mark something by using it rather than by talking about it, and one ordinary meal cooked on purpose has never once been a ceremony anybody had to sit through. The Holy Spirit is the one in the kitchen while the last one gets cooked, and Psalm 103:2 counts benefits item by item.

And say the number out loud at the table. Nineteen birthdays came off this. That is all. Somebody will say something and somebody will remember one and the whole thing will take ninety seconds and it will be the right ninety seconds.