Running the Table on Empty

Half past four and the hall is cold because the heating comes on at five, and she is doing the trestles on her own again because Marie's daughter is unwell and Ken said he would come at quarter to.

Thursday.

Eight years. It was six people and a box in the first year and it is between forty and sixty now depending on the week and the weather, and there is a spreadsheet and a schedule and a food hygiene certificate with her name on it.

She loves them. She could tell you about most of them. She knows which of the men will not take anything unless it is offered twice and she knows which of the women comes for the room rather than the food.

And since about February she has been running on fumes.

Not tired. She knows tired. This is the other thing, where you are doing the actions and something in you is standing about eight feet behind watching yourself do them.

And two weeks ago a man she has known for three years asked her, quite reasonably, whether there would be any of the soup left, and something went through her that she has not told a single person about.

It was irritation. At him. At a man who has nothing, in a hall she opened, over soup she made.

It lasted about two seconds and it went and she was pleasant to him and he got soup.

And she has not been the same since, because she cannot square that two seconds with eight years, and there is nobody she can tell, because everybody in her life thinks of her as the woman who does the Thursday table.

If you have kept something running past the point where you had anything left, you know that cold hall at half past four. And you know the thing that arrives eventually: I am doing the right thing and something in me has started going wrong, and I cannot stop and I cannot say it.

The word, and then what you draw out first

Let me take the other end of that trestle and say the plain thing before Ken comes.

The problem is not the table. The table is good and it feeds sixty people and there is nothing wrong with it and you are not about to stop it.

The problem is the two seconds, and that you have been carrying it alone for two weeks, and that the only people you could tell are people who need the table to keep existing.

So let me put the word straight first.

Blessed does not mean having enough to give. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking. It was on you in year one with six people and a box, and it is on you at half past four in a cold hall running on nothing.

Now the verse, and I want you to look at the word Isaiah puts first.

And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday.Isaiah 58:10

Draw out thy soul.

Not: draw out thy soup. Not: draw out thy provisions. Soul, first, before there is any mention of bread anywhere in the sentence.

Which is Isaiah being exact about something people get wrong constantly. The thing that goes into a hall like this is not primarily food. It is a person. Anybody can put out soup. The thing that has been keeping forty people coming for eight years is that somebody is drawing herself out and putting herself on a trestle table twice a week.

And a soul that is being drawn out runs down. Of course it does. That is what drawing out means. You do not draw out of a thing that is full and stays full.

You have been drawing out your own soul for eight years and it has gone down, which is exactly what the verb describes. Isaiah 58:10 says draw out thy soul before it says one word about the hungry being fed, and it is the Holy Spirit who is described as the one who strengthens the inner man, which is the specific place this has been coming out of.

The two seconds, and what they are evidence of

Now the two seconds, because you have been carrying it as evidence about your character for two weeks and it is evidence about something else entirely.

Irritation at a man asking about soup is not a fault in how you love him. It is a reading on a gauge.

That is all it is. A gauge does not have a moral position. It went off because the tank is low, and it went off at the exact moment it should have gone off, and you had it for two seconds and then you were pleasant to him and he got soup, which is a considerable amount of information about your character in the other direction.

And here is the thing about people in your position that nobody says. Everybody watches the table. Nobody watches you. There is a schedule for the soup and there is no schedule for the woman.

You have a gauge that has been reading low since February and nobody has looked at it including you. Scripture puts the drawing out at the start of that verse and never once suggests it is inexhaustible, and it is the Holy Spirit who is named as the one who strengthens rather than a person being expected to supply themselves.

And this is not a message telling you to stop. That would be a person who has never run anything talking to a person who has run something for eight years, and you would rightly ignore it.

It is smaller than that, and it is two things.

One: tell somebody. Not somebody who needs the table. Somebody outside it. Say the sentence about the two seconds out loud to one human being this week, because a thing carried alone for two weeks becomes a thing carried alone for a year, and then it stops being about soup.

Two: put one thing on the schedule that is for you. Not a rest. A specific thing, with a name on it, that somebody else does, so that half past four in a cold hall is not you and a trestle table on your own again.

You are permitted to be on the schedule, and nothing in that verse asks a person to be the only one who is not. Isaiah 58 is a whole chapter about a fast God actually wants, and it is His Spirit who supplies the strength, which means the arrangement where you are the sole source was never in the text.

What the verse promises and what it does not

Now the second half of that verse, because it is a promise and it is worth reading precisely.

Then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday.

Notice what it does not say. It does not say the hall gets easier. It does not say Ken turns up at quarter to. It does not say more volunteers, or a bigger grant, or a better schedule.

It says light in a dark place, in you.

Which is precisely the thing that has been going since February. Not the numbers. Not the logistics. The light.

You have a promise aimed at the exact thing that has been running down rather than at the logistics around it. Isaiah 58:10 puts the light in obscurity as the outcome rather than any improvement in circumstances, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the one bearing that in a person, which means the thing being promised is not a thing you have to arrange.

And nothing comes back to you for the soup. That is worth being clear about, because this whole site is clear about it. There is no return, no offset, no provision generated by provision. What Isaiah names is light in a dark place, and that is a description of what God does in a person and never a payment for services.

I do not know how long you keep doing this. Eight years is a long time and there is a point where handing it on is wisdom and not failure, and only you can see the gauge.