The Widow and Brown Sugar

… Just now I was collecting a few sticks, to go in and prepare something for myself and my son; when we have eaten it, we shall die.” 1 Kings 17:12
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These words were a part of last Sundays first reading, and they are stuck to my heart like Velcro!  The noise this verse was making in my head really picked up volume when I threw a little hissy fit because I was making cinnamon rolls to take to a friend and realized the brown sugar container was almost empty.  You simply can’t make a batch of proper cinnamon rolls with just a sprinkle of brown sugar for heavens sake!  As I spit and sputtered around the kitchen trying to figure out who to call to borrow sugar, I was frustrated about the inconvenient task of getting enough to finish before the dough was ruined.  It was a silly thing to get flustered about but right in the middle of my dramatic grumbling, something prompted me to look on the pantry shelf above the canisters and low and behold…there was a full unopened bag.  Once the convenient solution to the problem appeared, I began to feel ridiculous as the words of the widow in the Scripture Reading came to mind.

Nobody was going to die or even notice if the cinnamon rolls weren’t made the usual way.  There was no consequence that warranted me getting all flustered.  If I’m being totally honest, I actually found not one, but two bags of unopened brown sugar on that top shelf…and then I felt really silly, and   my heart was wide open for the lesson to come.  As I stood there rolling and cutting dough, I realized the lesson wasn’t about organization or brown sugar at all,  but about the widows lesson of trust and enough.

The poor widow wasn’t being dramatic, that was her reality, and she had embraced it and stated it to Elijah plainly.  It was all she had yet she shared it with him knowing the direness of her situation would arrive even sooner.  As I puddle that through my thoughts, I realize how much excess I have…how much extra I think I need and I had to ask myself why?  Why did I have two full bags of brown sugar?  Did I need them, would we suffer peril if I ran out?  I stood there looking into my pantry realizing how much we have but yet I still had that flustered feeling when I thought I was almost out of something.  Boy, do I have a lot to learn from that widow.  I began to wonder about the security I feel when there is “extra” and I noticed so many places I seem to have “extra extra!”  Is my hope and trust in the pantry, or the closet or the garage?  Do I put faith in the security of my excess or in provider of the abundance?  I have a lot of wonders.  I don’t think the Lord wants me to quit going to Kroger until my pantry and fridge are completely empty but even if I did, I wouldn’t be in the same boat as the widow.  I realized I trust my planning and bargain shopping skills to offer a bit of security and I knew I was being invited to shift those things to a trust in God’s Providence.
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I’m not the widow and I don’t think that’s what Jesus is asking me to be, but he did stir in my heart a desire to trust him more and to grow in generosity.  He isn’t asking me to empty my house of everything but oil and flour, but he is inviting me to look at what I might be clinging to for security and take a peek at all the things I keep around “just in case” that I could share with others.  Mostly, he’s asking me to pray long and hard about the word “enough” when it comes to the things of the world because I think sometimes, they litter the path to him.  Ultimately, he’s reminding me that he loves me just like he loved that widow and her son and he will always make sure I have more than enough of the things that really matter when I seek him first.
 
A Seed To Plant:  Join me this week in taking an honest look at what we have, what we need and what we can let go of to make more room for the Father. 

Blessings on your day!