He eats standing up. Every time.
Not because there is nowhere to sit. There are eleven chairs out there and two of them are usually empty by the end, and every single person at that table would move along and make room and be glad to.
He eats standing at the counter, out of whatever pan has the most left in it, with a fork, in about four minutes, after the last of them has gone through to the courtyard.
Nobody has ever remarked on it. It looks like a man having a quick something while he tidies, which is exactly what it looks like, and it has looked like that for about fifteen years.
Here is what he noticed a few weeks ago and did not care for.
He was not eating a meal. He was clearing one.
There is a difference and he can feel it now that he has seen it. Everybody out there was having dinner. He was disposing of what was left over so it did not go to waste, and his own body was the thing he was disposing of it into.
That is a strange sentence and he would never say it out loud. But it is accurate, and he has known for a fortnight that it is accurate, and it has been sitting with him.
He is not unhappy. He loves those evenings and they are the best thing in his life.
He simply eats standing up, out of a pan, and he has come to think of himself as the last item on the clearing up.
If you eat standing up, come and sit down out here. Nobody is going to tell you what to eat.
Glorify God in your body, and the body is inside the worship
There is a sentence Paul finishes a whole argument with, and the placement of the body in it is the thing to notice.
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.1 Corinthians 6:20
In your body. Not with your body, as though it were an instrument you use for something more important. In it. The body is the location of the worship rather than the equipment for it, and Paul puts it first in the pair.
That matters to a man standing at a counter, because a whole life has been arranged around a distinction Paul does not make. The important part happens at the table with the people. Your own physical needs are logistics, dealt with afterwards, out of a pan.
Scripture does not carry that split.
You are inside the worship rather than outside it holding the pans, and the word puts the body in first. 1 Corinthians 6:20 makes the body the place where God is glorified rather than the means of getting there, and it is the Holy Spirit named in the previous verse as living in it, which means the four minutes at the counter are happening somewhere God already is.
Nothing here is about what you eat
Now let me be clear about what this article will not do, because a man who has just realized something about himself is vulnerable to being handed a program.
There is nothing here about food. Not what, not how much, not what to give up, not what to take. This site does not know your body, and a real person acts on what they read, so it will not pretend to.
There is nothing here about anybody's medicine, which stays entirely between you and the people who look after you.
And there is nothing here suggesting that if you had treated yourself better you would be in a different state. That sum is not available to anybody and it is cruel to run it on a person.
What there is, is the location.
You have a body that God calls His own, and the calling is not conditional on where you eat it. 1 Corinthians 6:19 calls it the temple of the Holy Spirit which you have of God, and it is that Spirit who lives in the man at the counter as much as in the men at the table, which means the arrangement you have made was never a spiritual one.
And here is what undoes the pan. You have been fed by God through the whole of the fifteen years you spent feeding everybody else. Psalm 23:5 says He prepares a table before me, with the person being served rather than serving, and it is His Spirit who makes that a thing a man can actually receive, which means somebody has been setting a place for you the entire time you were clearing plates.
God is the one holding you, and He has never once regarded you as the last item on the clearing up.
Something is on this table for you, in a kitchen or a courtyard or wherever you are reading this.
You are one of the people this was built for, and that has been true for the whole fifteen years. 1 Corinthians 6:20 puts the body inside the glorifying rather than outside it, and it is the Holy Spirit who lives in the one you are standing in, which means there was never a version of this where you were the staff and everybody else was the family.
Nothing here asks you to change how the evenings run. You will still cook, and it is still the best thing in your life, and nobody is suggesting you stop.
What is available is one small kindness done in your own body, taken as something God is interested in rather than as maintenance on the equipment. It does not have to happen at that table in front of anybody, because this was never about the chair.
You are inside the arrangement rather than the man who serves it, and you were put there rather than admitted on appeal. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, and it is written to ordinary believers about their own frames, and the same Spirit named in that verse is in the man at the counter as fully as in anybody at the table.
Declare this over yourself
You speak these as somebody standing in a place given to you rather than earned. It was given to you in Christ, the authority is His own and delegated, and it is the Spirit named in 1 Corinthians who lives in the body you are standing in. What your body does next, and how it goes, is His to decide, so leave the outcome with Him and simply say what is true.
- Pan I eat out of standing up, you are not where I belong in this house. Paul says glorify God in your body and puts the body inside the worship rather than outside holding the equipment, and His Spirit lives in the man at the counter. You are not the last item on the clearing up.
- Split I made between table and logistics, you are not in Scripture, and in the name of Jesus I set you out of this kitchen. The psalm says He prepares a table before me, with the person served rather than serving, and the Holy Spirit makes that something a man can receive. Looking after this is not vanity and it is not beside the point.
- Lord, You have been setting a place for me through fifteen years of me clearing plates, and Your Spirit is living in this body while I stand here. I take one kindness today, whichever is possible. My body is Yours too.
1 Corinthians 6:20
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
