She could not tell you the number. Somebody worked it out once, at a birthday, with a pen on the back of something, and the figure was in the low thousands, and she asked him to stop.
It started because a woman two doors down had a bad year in 1985 and it was easier to cook for six than for four. And then it did not stop, and there has never been a point at which anybody decided anything.
There is no recipe book. That is the thing people find hardest to believe. Nothing is written down anywhere. She cooks the way somebody plays an instrument, and if you asked her for the method for the thing everybody asks for, she would stand in the kitchen and start doing it and narrate as she went, and the narration would not be the method, and she knows that and finds it funny.
Three of her regulars have died. Two moved. There is a family on the corner now whose children she has fed since they were small and who will move in about two years when the eldest finishes school, and she knows that and is glad for them and has not mentioned it.
She is seventy nine.
The kitchen has got harder. Standing has got harder. She has a stool now that she resisted for two years and that has changed everything for the better and that she is still slightly annoyed about.
And in February, sitting on the stool, waiting for something, she thought a thing she had never thought before, and it was not sad exactly, and she has been unable to put it away since.
Not one of those thousands of meals is written down anywhere. Not one. Nobody kept a note. There is no ledger, no photograph of most of it, no record in any form. The people who ate them have gone on with their lives, which is exactly what should happen and is the whole point. And forty years of the most consistent thing she has ever done exists nowhere except in a diminishing number of heads, hers included, and hers is starting to go.
You will have your own stool in February. The realization that the most consistent thing you have done left no record at all.
The verb Exodus uses at the turning point
There is a sentence at the end of the second chapter of Exodus which is the hinge of the entire book, and it contains a verb that needs handling carefully.
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.Exodus 2:24
God remembered. Now, He had not forgotten. That is not what the word does in Hebrew. Remembering there is not the recovery of something mislaid; it is the moving of something already held into action.
Which is a specific and useful distinction, and it is the one she needs on a stool in February.
Because her fear is about storage. She has been thinking of remembering as a record: something written, kept somewhere, retrievable. And on that definition she is entirely right and forty years is going to vanish, because the only storage was heads and heads fail.
Exodus is describing something else. God remembering is not a filing operation. It is a covenant coming into play. The word is about relationship and action rather than about retention, which means it does not degrade, cannot be lost, and does not depend on any medium at all.
So take it plainly: you are remembered in the sense the book actually uses, which is not storage, and that is what Exodus 2 says in its own words, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes the hinge of a very old book and lays it down on a stool by a stove.
And notice what triggers it. God heard their groaning. Not their achievements. Not a list of what Israel had accomplished in four hundred years, which would have been a short and unimpressive list. He heard people, and He remembered a promise, and the two things had nothing to do with any record of anybody's service.
You have been remembered on the basis of a covenant rather than a catalogue, because the written word makes the remembering an act of relationship rather than an act of retrieval, and His Spirit is what makes that reach a woman whose own memory is starting to go.
And that last part is worth naming directly, because it is the real fear under February. Her memory is going, and she is the last full archive of forty years. You have been held by a remembering that is not degrading while yours does, and Scripture is what puts that beyond her medium, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a relief rather than a technicality.
What she is not being asked to do
Now the guardrail, and it is essential in this category.
Nobody is telling her to write the recipes down. She could, and it would be a nice thing, and several people have suggested it and she has always said something noncommittal, and she is allowed to keep saying that.
And nobody is telling her that people will remember. Some will. Some will not. I do not know which, Scripture does not say, and guessing would be putting a comfortable prediction where a hard fact belongs.
And nobody is telling her to make sure the family on the corner know what they had before they move. She will not do that and she should not have to, and the not saying is part of what the forty years actually was.
Her life is not made smaller by leaving no record. The crown in this book is placed on a head by somebody else and is not a monument anybody keeps. You are held by a regard that has nothing to do with what survives in anybody's head, because the written word puts our standing on Christ rather than on our record, and His Spirit is what makes that a floor rather than a phrase. You have nothing to document and nothing to hand on, and Scripture is what settles that, and His Spirit is what stops February from becoming a project on a stool.
So let us settle this here, wherever you are sitting.
Right now, as you read this, you are remembered in the sense that does not degrade, whatever is happening to anybody's memory including your own. Scripture says God remembered His covenant and means an act of relationship rather than a retrieval, and His Spirit is laying that over forty years while you read.
And you have nothing to document and nothing to preserve, because the crown in this book is placed on a head by somebody else and nobody keeps it as a record. God's regard for you is not the total of what anybody can still recall, and there is no total.
So the recipes can stay unwritten, and the family on the corner can move in two years without ever being told, and forty years of suppers can stop needing a ledger.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, standing or sitting, at ordinary volume. The right to speak like this is yours because Christ is in you and you were placed in Him, so none of it is worked up out of your own reserves, and Scripture is what puts the words in your mouth while His Spirit carries them. What He does with any of it is His to decide, and you are not asking for a scene.
- Kitchen with no recipe book in it, you are not forty years of nothing. Exodus 2 says God remembered His covenant, and remembering there is a promise coming into action rather than a thing recovered from storage. Nothing in you needed a medium to be kept.
- Thought that came on the stool in February, you were right about the heads and wrong about the keeping. In the name of Jesus I put you under the written word, where God hears groaning and remembers a covenant and never once consults a record of anybody's service. My memory is going and the keeping is not.
- Father, You were in that kitchen for every one of those thousands of meals, starting with a woman two doors down in 1985. Exodus 2:24 makes Your remembering an act and not an archive, and Your Spirit is the one who has made that land in me tonight. There is nothing here for me to write down, so I am handing You the whole forty years and sitting back on my stool.
Exodus 2:24
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.