My Grandmother Wiped The Same Table For Fifty Years

Your grandmother wiped the same table for about fifty years.

Same table. Same yellow cloth, or a succession of yellow cloths, which amounts to the same thing. Every day after the meal, twice a day in the end, for fifty years.

And here is a sum you have done in your head at least once: fifty years of wiping, and at the end of it, a table.

Not a monument. Not a body of work. A table, which is exactly as wiped as it was on the first day and no more.

That sum has sat in you for a while and it has become an argument about your own life. If fifty years of it produces a table, then what exactly are you doing every evening, and why does any of it count.

I want to look at that sum properly, because I think it is missing almost everything.

It measured the table. It did not measure a single one of the ten thousand meals eaten at it, or the four generations who sat down, or what it meant to walk into that kitchen on a bad day and find it ready.

Those were the product. The table was only ever the equipment.

Establish thou the work of our hands

There is a prayer at the end of Psalm 90 that asks God for something specific about ongoing work.

And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. (Psalm 90:17, King James Version)

Establish. Not complete. Not finish, not preserve, not make permanent.

To establish a thing is to make it stand and keep standing, which is a word about something living and continuing rather than about something delivered and signed off.

You are asking for work that stands rather than work that ends, and standing has never once been the lesser outcome. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman doing arithmetic about her grandmother's table, and Psalm 90:17 prays for the work of the hands to be established and never once to be finished.

And look at the repetition inside the prayer itself.

He says it twice. Establish thou the work of our hands upon us, and then immediately, the work of our hands establish thou it. The prayer repeats because the work repeats, and nobody in the psalm finds that embarrassing.

You have a prayer that repeats itself because the work does, and the repeating has never once been a mark against either one. The written word says the same request twice in one verse without apology, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman who has decided her own evenings do not count.

What the sum left out

So let me redo the sum with the other columns in it.

Fifty years of that table. Ten thousand meals, at a rough guess. Four generations of people sitting down at a surface that was ready for them.

Every single one of those depended on a woman with a yellow cloth, and not one of them shows up in the state of the table, because the table is equipment and the meals were the point.

You were counting the equipment and never the meals, and the equipment has never once been what any of it was for. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman recounting fifty years with the right column in it, and Psalm 90:17 asks for the work of the hands to be made to stand.

And now do the same sum on your own kitchen.

Whatever your evening clearing produces, it is not a countertop. It is a room that four people can walk into tomorrow. It is somebody finding what they need before school. It is the difference between a morning that works and one that does not, every single day, invisibly.

You are producing tomorrow morning and never a countertop, and no countertop has ever once been the thing you were making. The written word prays over the work of the hands as a living thing to be upheld, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has been measuring the wrong object for years.

One surface, twice, for the morning

So here is the work, and it has a purpose attached to it that is not the surface.

Choose one surface. Clear only that one tonight, and clear the same one again tomorrow.

And as you do it, think about the morning rather than the counter.

You are making a morning and never a surface, and the morning has never once shown up in the state of the counter. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman clearing one corner with tomorrow in mind, and Psalm 90:17 asks for the ongoing work to be established.

Here is why the second evening matters here.

One evening looks like tidying. Two evenings in a row is the beginning of a rhythm, and a rhythm is the thing your grandmother actually had. She did not have a system and she did not have a finished house. She had a repeated act with people on the other side of it.

You are building a rhythm and never a result, and a rhythm has never once been a smaller thing to have. The written word prays the same request twice in one breath, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman doing the same corner on two consecutive evenings.