The Potluck and the Foil Pan

Same pan. She has carried the same rectangular foil pan to this hall on the second Sunday of the month for thirty years, in a carrier her mother made, and it goes home empty every single time.

Green beans. She has brought green beans since before some of the people eating them were born, and there was a stretch in the nineties when a woman on the committee tried to organize the dishes so there was not overlap, and three separate people told her privately that they were not touching the green beans.

It is a good afternoon. She would tell you that plainly. Forty-odd people, long tables, mismatched dishes, a boy running who should not be running. She was spoken to by everybody. She had a real conversation with the pastor's wife about a thing that mattered. Two different people asked after her hip and listened to the answer.

And she is walking to her car with an empty pan in a carrier her mother made, and she is going home to a house where she will wash it and put it in the same cupboard it has lived in since 1994.

And there is something that did not get touched this afternoon, and she has no words for it whatsoever.

It is not loneliness. She wants to be clear about that with herself, because loneliness is what everybody assumes about a widow and it would be an easier thing to name. She is not short of people. Her daughter phones. She has friends of fifty years. She is in that hall every second Sunday and she is genuinely wanted there.

The nearest she can get is that she was talked to by forty people and something in her was not reached by any of it, and she has been going home from this hall with that exact feeling for a long time and never once said so.

And you know that pan. There is a hunger in you that is not about wanting company, and you have been surrounded by good people who love you, and it is still there in the car.

So take this in before we go a step further. You are not being ungrateful and there is nothing wrong with you for feeling this in the car. Psalm 34:10 says they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing, and want there is the old word for lack rather than for wish, and the Holy Spirit is in this car with you and is not embarrassed to be here.

He opens His hand

There is a line in the last stretch of the Psalms that is easy to read past because it sounds general, and it is not general at all.

Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.Psalm 145:16

Look at what is being satisfied. Not the needs. Not the requirements. The desire.

That is a much more particular word. A need can be met by anybody with resources. A desire is specific to the creature that has it, and to satisfy a desire you have to know what that particular living thing actually wants, which is a considerably higher bar than keeping something fed.

And the verse claims it of every living thing. Not every important thing. Every one.

Now hold that against a hall full of forty people who were all kind to you this afternoon. They met a great many needs. You were welcomed, fed, spoken to, asked after, and included, and every one of those is real and none of them is what you drove home with.

The verse is not describing that kind of provision. It is describing somebody who knows what a particular creature wants and opens a hand toward it.

You are known specifically enough to be satisfied rather than merely provided for. The written word says the desire rather than the need, which means what is offered is fitted to the individual creature rather than issued in general; and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into a car with an empty pan on the passenger seat.

And read the verse before it. The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. In due season. There is timing in this, and the timing belongs to Him, and the waiting is described as an ordinary posture rather than as a failure.

Kindness cannot reach everything, and that is not a fault in it

I want to say something about those forty people, because you are going to be tempted to feel disloyal for driving home like this.

They did not fail you. What happened in that hall is exactly what a good church does, and you have been part of doing it for other people for thirty years. Being welcomed and asked after and fed is not a lesser thing and I am not going to write it off in order to make a point.

But there is a kind of hunger that human company does not reach, and it does not reach it not because the company is thin but because the hunger is not aimed at company. You could have had eighty people instead of forty and driven home the same.

That is not a criticism of anybody in that building. It is a description of the shape of the thing you are carrying.

You were not let down this afternoon, and the ache is not aimed at anything a hall can supply. Psalm 63:5 says my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and the writer says it in a wilderness with nobody around him at all; His Spirit is the one who does that satisfying, and He is not measuring how sociable you were at the tables.

And here is the second half, and I am going to be careful with it, because this is where a page like this usually goes wrong. I am not going to tell you what this hunger is about. I do not know. I do not know what your marriage was or what your husband was to you or what the last few years have taken, and a stranger writing at a distance who starts explaining a widow to herself is doing something presumptuous.

What is true is that it is real, and that it does not need a diagnosis before it can be met, and that God is described in that verse as satisfying a desire rather than as correcting one.

You are not being asked to account for it, and no explanation is required before the hand opens. Psalm 145:18 says the LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth, and the only condition named is truth rather than clarity; the same Spirit who had that written is the one who has ridden home with you from that hall for a long time.

The pan is not the point and it is a little bit the point

Here is something worth noticing, and then I will leave it alone.

Thirty years. The same pan, in a carrier your mother made, and it comes home empty every time, and you have never once told anybody that the second Sunday of the month is a day you both look forward to and drive home from.

You have been the one bringing something to that hall for three decades. Every second Sunday, without fail, you arrive carrying.

I am not going to make an elaborate point out of that, because you did not bring beans for thirty years in order to be a metaphor. But it is worth saying once, out loud: a woman who has arrived carrying for thirty years might not have much practice at arriving empty, and the verse in front of us has God opening a hand toward a creature that is doing nothing but waiting.

You are allowed to arrive with the pan empty on the way in, and the waiting is the whole posture named. Scripture says the eyes of all wait upon thee, and thou givest them their meat in due season, and waiting there is not idleness, it is the ordinary attitude of everything alive; the Holy Spirit is the one who has been in that hall on every second Sunday since 1994.

So the empty pan is not evidence of anything. It is a rectangular foil pan in a carrier a woman made a long time ago, and a car on the way home, and a hunger that has somewhere to be taken.

And one plain thing before we go on. If the ache has gone further than an ache, find a real person this week and let them be with you in it. If it has turned into not wanting to be here, tell somebody today; in the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour and a real person will answer.