The Freezer Had Been Off Since Friday

The door had not been shut properly since Friday.

You found that out on Sunday afternoon, and the finding out took about one second, because a freezer that has been open since Friday announces itself before you get to the handle.

And then came the part you did not expect, which is that you stood there with the door in your hand and did nothing for a while.

Not shock. Not really. Something more like arithmetic starting up on its own.

Because in that drawer was the meat from the thing in July that was on offer and you bought extra. And the bags of things frozen flat on purpose, in portions, which took a Sunday afternoon to do. And the two containers at the back with the tape on them and the date written on the tape.

That is not food. Not while you are standing there. It is a month of Tuesdays. It is the answer to the question what are we eating asked thirty separate times by people who live in your house, and the answer just went soft in the dark over a weekend while nobody noticed.

And I want to say, before anything else, what that arithmetic actually is, because it is not really about food.

It is a man in a kitchen doing a quiet audit of himself.

You are emptying a freezer and not auditing a man, and food that went soft in the dark has never once been a measure of how you provide.

Sufficient unto the day

There is a sentence at the end of a long passage about worry, and it is the least sentimental thing in the whole Bible.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Matthew 6:34, King James Version)

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Meaning: today has enough in it. Today comes with a full measure of its own trouble, and that measure is complete, and nothing further needs adding to it from any other day.

That is not a comfort in the soft sense. It is a boundary. It draws a line around a day and says the trouble inside this line is what you are responsible for carrying, and every other day has its own line and carries its own.

You are responsible for one day at a time and that is the whole of the assignment, and a Sunday afternoon has never once been asked to carry the freight of thirty Tuesdays. Matthew 6:34 says sufficient unto the day and draws the border in plain words, and the Holy Spirit is the one who enforces a border in a man standing at an open freezer.

Now look at what happened in that kitchen against that verse.

Today's trouble was a freezer that needs emptying and a bag that needs taking out. That is real, and it is bounded, and a person can do it in twenty minutes.

But standing in front of it, the trouble being carried was a month of meals not yet eaten, on days that have not arrived, for people who are not hungry yet. Thirty days of trouble collected and stacked up and held at once by a man in a kitchen on a Sunday.

You have been holding days that have not come yet, and a month of meals gathered into one afternoon has never once been the load a single day was given to you to carry. The written word draws a line around today and leaves tomorrow to itself, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a week out of a man's hands and hands him back an hour.

And notice that Jesus does not deny that the days have trouble in them. He does not say the freezer does not matter or that the food was not worth anything. He says the trouble is sufficient. It is enough on its own. Do not go and fetch more of it from days that have not happened.

You were never told the trouble was imaginary, and a verse that calls the day's evil sufficient has never once pretended that nothing happened in your kitchen. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a loss be real without letting it be thirty times its size, and Matthew 6:34 is honest about the trouble in the same breath that it limits it.

What is actually in the bag

Let me be practical, because practical helps here and there is a version of practical that is a mercy.

In that bag there is food that has spoiled. That is a real loss and I am not going to talk you out of it or tell you it does not matter. It cost money and it cost a Sunday afternoon of portioning, and losing it is a genuine thing to lose.

What is not in the bag is any information about you.

A door that did not latch is a door that did not latch. It is a mechanical event in a hinge and a seal, and it happened on Friday while the house was busy, and it would have happened in exactly the same way in a house run by anybody at all.

You are looking at a seal and a hinge and not at a verdict, and a door that failed to catch has never once been a statement about the man who lives here. Matthew 6:34 keeps the trouble of a day inside the day rather than letting it climb into a person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps those two apart on a Sunday afternoon.

Here is the second practical thing, and it is the one that actually shortens the job.

Do not itemize as you go. That is the whole trap. Every bag lifted out and identified and priced in your head is the arithmetic starting again, and the arithmetic is what is making a twenty minute job take ninety minutes and cost you the evening.

Open the bag. Move things from the freezer to the bag without looking at them. Tie it.

You are allowed to empty a freezer without reading every item in it, and a job done without commentary has never once been a job done carelessly. The written word tells a man to take no thought for the morrow, and the Spirit of God is the one who quiets a running tally in a kitchen while a bag gets filled.

Then it goes out. Tonight, to the curb, not tomorrow, because a bag that stays by the back door is the whole thing continuing.