No More Oil

Do not be afraid…1 Kings 17:13

The other night I was making dinner and I reached in the cupboard to grab the olive oil.  I pulled out the dark green bottle and began to pour, only to discover that instead of a stream of oil coming from the bottle all I was seeing was a few drips!  I immediately got frustrated at the inconvenience.  Instead of quickly finishing up, I had to go dig through the pantry and hopefully retrieve a full bottle.  After just a few seconds of looking and re-shuffling the pantry I found a full bottle and returned to my task.  As I stood there in my kitchen stirring I was wondering who it was who emptied the old one without replacing it and why couldn’t they have just taken a few more seconds to replace the bottle instead of leaving the work to me.  Then like a smack to the head, I remembered the story of the widow and Elijah from the Old Testament.

If you remember the story, Elijah shows up at this widow’s house during a time of famine and asks her for some water to drink and something to eat.  She looks at him and lets him know she’d love to help but can’t.  She honestly reports that she has only a bit of oil and a tiny bit of flour and she was getting ready to prepare the last of it for a meal for herself and her son…get this…and then they were going to  die because there was no more food.  Pause there for a minute…replay…I’m going to use the last drops of oil and spoons of flour to make a cake (yum ?) for us and then we will prepare to die.  Not, then I will go to the pantry and get more oil.  Not, then I will run to the store and buy more oil or go to the neighbor’s house and borrow more.  I will use what I have and that is the end of it all.  I can’t even imagine!

As I stood in my kitchen embarrassed about my little empty oil bottle tiff and the widows story I began to see things differently.  I glanced over at a full pantry.  Behind me was a full refrigerator and on the counter was a bowl of fruit all of which could probably feed a village in some places of the world and suddenly the word plenty was the only one I could think of.  I have plenty; plenty of food, plenty of money, plenty of clothes, plenty of EVERYTHING but yet I often focus on what I don’t have instead of what I have plenty of.  All of the sudden I felt pretty small, pretty foolish and pretty ungrateful.

The widow’s story continues when Elijah tells her to go ahead and make him some food and the Lord will take care of her and her son.  In an unbelievable act of faith she uses the rest of her resources to feed Elijah and as promised, her oil jug and her flour jar never ran dry.  The story is about so much more than kitchen staples!  God offers the same promise to us each and every day.  Just trust me, I will take care of you because I love you and I will reward your faithfulness.  The widow loved God more than she loved her stuff.  The widow was generous and trusting to an extreme; and her generosity and faithfulness were rewarded to an extreme.  It’s a story that offered me perspective and reflection.  It made me think about my own gratefulness and trust and generosity.  I can’t change all the crazy stuff going on in the world right now but I can’t help but think how much different things would be if we focused on a few of the widow’s lessons and figured out how to use them in our own life.

A Seed To Plant:  Read the story from 1Kings 17:7-16 and ask God to help you reflect on the story and show you how he wants you to draw closer to him.​

Blessings on your day!