The Counter on Sunday Morning

He comes down at about half past six because he always has, and the light through the window over the sink is the good light, the flat early kind, and the counter is exactly as it was at midnight.

Ikaika is forty four. Last night was his niece's graduation party and there were thirty people in this house and it was, by every measure, a wonderful evening. His sister cried. Somebody made a speech that was too long and everybody loved it. His mother danced with the youngest boy standing on her feet.

And now it is half past six and there are about nineteen glasses on that counter in various states, and three bottles, and a bowl of something, and the whole geography of somebody else's good night laid out end to end in the first place he looks every morning.

Nobody left it there to be unkind. People went home at one in the morning and there is no version of thirty people leaving a house at one in the morning where the kitchen is dealt with.

He has been sober six years. He is not in danger standing in that kitchen and he knows it.

But there is a thing that happens in a man's chest when the first sight of a day is that particular arrangement, and it is not craving, and it has no name, and it lasts about as long as it takes to fill the kettle, and it happens every time.

You know that counter. It might be a kitchen after a party, a recycling bin on a Tuesday, a table nobody has cleared. Nobody meant anything by it. It is simply the first thing you see, and it takes something out of you before the day has started.

You are held in peace before the room is dealt with, and you were never waiting for a tidy house to be safe. The psalm says I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety, and the peace arrives before anything is resolved; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a real fact in a kitchen at half past six on a Sunday.

I will both lay me down in peace

Let me name the thing exactly, because it is quiet and it is easy to dismiss.

You are not in danger. You have said so yourself. What happens in that kitchen is smaller and stranger: for about forty seconds, the whole of your last life is arranged on a counter in front of you, in glass, and your body reacts to the sight of it before your mind gets a word in. It is not desire. It is recognition. And then it passes, and you fill the kettle, and nobody has any idea it happened.

And nothing here is going to tell you to ask your family to clear up before they go. Thirty people leaving at one in the morning is thirty people who had a wonderful time, and a rule about the kitchen would put a small permanent weight on every gathering in that house.

So here is the psalm, and it is short and it is more startling than it looks.

I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.Psalm 4:8

Read the whole psalm and you find that nothing has been sorted out. People are still saying things about him. The question in verse six, who will show us any good, has not been answered. There is no resolution anywhere in those eight verses. And on the back of that, he goes to bed.

You have peace available with the situation unresolved, and you were never told to wait until the room was dealt with. That is what stands written in Psalm 4, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available at half past six in a kitchen full of glass.

And then look at the word only. Thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety. Not mainly. Not chiefly. Only. He is not saying God helps most and other things help a bit; he is saying that the entire safety of his situation rests on one source, which is why the state of the room does not alter it.

You are safe on one source alone, and you were never depending on the kitchen being clear. Scripture uses the word only, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that exclusivity a comfort rather than a technicality on a Sunday morning.

And dwell. Not visit, not survive, not get through. Dwell is a living word, an ordinary word, the word for where you actually reside. The psalm is not describing a rescue; it is describing a residence. Safety is where he lives, and he lies down in it as a matter of routine.

You are living in safety rather than escaping into it, and you were never being handed a rescue for one bad morning. The written word says dwell, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that an address rather than an event for a man at forty four.

And now the plain thing, and it belongs in the middle here. Six years of a forty second thing every time, and never telling a soul, is a lot of forty seconds. Tell somebody. A friend, a counselor, the room where people say true things out loud on a weeknight. That is God's kindness with a face on it, and it takes nothing away from a party that was, by every measure, wonderful.