Her Dishes Have Never Been Used

They have been in that cupboard for eleven years and nobody has eaten off one of them.

You know exactly how many there are. You know which two have the chip. You know they are in the cupboard above the one you actually use, wrapped, at the back, and that they came out of her house on a Tuesday in a box you packed yourself.

And every year, at the point when a person would use good dishes, you have looked at that cupboard and not opened it.

Here is what happens in that moment, and it is worth being accurate about it because it is not what people think.

It is not that you are saving them for something better. There is no occasion coming that would qualify.

It is that using one would use one up. That is the actual feeling. Not rationally, because a plate does not get consumed by having food on it, but there is a fixed number of them and they came from a person who cannot supply any more, and something in you experiences a plate coming out of that cupboard as a withdrawal from an account that cannot be topped up.

So the account stays untouched, and eleven years of meals have happened on other plates.

Tonight we are going to take one out.

Fill the waterpots with water

There is a moment at Cana where Jesus asks for the household vessels, and the detail worth noticing is which vessels.

Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. (John 2:7, King James Version)

The waterpots. Those were the household's own vessels, standing there for ordinary purposes, and He asks for them to be used.

You are holding vessels of the kind God asks for rather than the kind He preserves, and something kept in a cupboard has never once been the state He asked anything to be in. John 2:7 has ordinary household pots filled and used, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a woman standing in front of a cupboard.

Now look at what happens to those pots, because it matters.

They get filled to the brim, they get used, and they become the vessel of the whole miracle. Their significance did not come from being preserved. It came from being available when they were asked for.

And notice something else. They were ordinary. There is nothing in that passage about them being special or valuable or held back for anything.

You have vessels whose whole significance came from being used, and a pot standing empty has never once been more honored than one filled to the brim. The Spirit of God is the one who works through household things that are actually in service, and it is written in John 2:7 that they filled them up and He used what was there.

Using is not spending

Now the practical part, and it is a single distinction.

Using is not spending.

That sounds obvious and the whole eleven years has been built on not believing it. Let me be concrete about the difference.

Spending is a thing that reduces the amount left. Money spent is gone. A finite supply of something consumable goes down every time you take from it.

A plate does not do that. A plate that has had eleven years of food on it is not less of a plate. It is the same plate, plus eleven years, and the eleven years are not a subtraction.

You are able to use something without reducing it, and a plate has never once been consumed by having a meal on it. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates using from spending, and John 2:7 has household vessels filled and used and made the center of the whole thing.

And here is the second half of it, and this is the piece that will matter most.

The dishes are currently doing nothing. Not resting, not being honored, not being kept safe. They are wrapped at the back of a cupboard, which is functionally identical to not having them.

An unopened cupboard is not a form of keeping somebody. It is a shape that grief took, and it is entirely understandable, and it is also not doing what you have been hoping it does.

You are able to keep somebody by using what she left rather than by storing it, and a wrapped plate has never once carried more of a person than one on a table. The Spirit of God is the one who is present at an ordinary meal on an inherited plate, and it is written in John 2:7 that the household's own vessels were the ones He asked for.

And this, plainly, in these words. That cupboard is not a report on you. Not on how much you loved her, not on how you have grieved, not on whether you have done it correctly. Eleven years of a closed cupboard is not a verdict on the woman standing in front of it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from a cupboard, and how a person's things have been kept has never once been a measure of how much she was loved. John 2:7 puts household vessels into service in John 2, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the kitchen with you.

One of them, out and in use

So here is the assignment, and the number is one on purpose.

Take one of her dishes out of that cupboard tonight and put it where you will use it this week.

One. Not the set. Not four of them. One dish, and pick one of the chipped ones if that makes it possible, because a chipped one is easier and there is no virtue in making this harder than it needs to be.

Take it out. Unwrap it. That part may take a minute and it may be worse than expected.

You are able to unwrap one thing without deciding anything about the rest, and one plate out of a cupboard has never once been the whole of anything. The Holy Spirit is the one in the kitchen while a woman unwraps something for the first time in eleven years, and John 2:7 has ordinary household pots filled up to the brim.

Then put it where it will actually be used. Not on display. Not in a place of honor. In the stack you take from. On the counter where the plates for tonight go.

Because the point is not to look at it. The point is that food goes on it this week, on an ordinary evening, with nothing special about the evening at all.

And when it happens, it will be an odd two minutes. Let it be odd. Eat off it anyway, and wash it up afterward like a plate, because that is what it is and that is what she used it for.

You are putting one dish into ordinary service, and a plate in the stack has never once honored somebody less than a plate in a cupboard. The Spirit of God is the one present at an unremarkable dinner on an inherited plate, and it is written in John 2:7 that He asked for the vessels that were standing there.