SCRIPTURE: 2 Kings 4:3-5 NLT And Elisha said, “Borrow as many empty jars as you can from your friends and neighbors. Then go into your house with your sons and shut the door behind you. Pour olive oil from your flask into the jars, setting each one aside when it is filled.” So she did as she was told. Her sons kept bringing jars to her, and she filled one after another. Soon every container was full to the brim!
THOUGHT: The widow in this story is left with debts she cannot pay. As a consequence, the authorities seek to take her sons as slaves. She has only a bit of oil, a symbol of anointing and healing throughout Scripture, and it has to be poured out. That is perhaps the fulcrum on which this story turns. Will a grieving, lonely, powerless, frightened widow pour out the only thing she has left, following instructions that seem crazy to human eyes and ears?
Sometimes we have little to offer, and yet Scripture is filled with stories of people who offer it anyway and change the course of their lives and the lives of others. My cousin, Kevin and his family are some of those people. He recently said to me, after loss, grief and pain have devastated his family for the last few years, “Oddly enough, with everything going on, I have never had more peace. A lamp is lit, and the wick burns without being consumed because of what is in the wick giving light to those around.”
What is in that wick? The oil of anointing and healing. The Spirit of God. The hope of enough even in desperate times — even enough to share.
PRAYER: Keep our lamps burning, oh God. Fill us with the oil of anointing and healing. Fill us with your Spirit, so our homes are permeated with light, and our lamps still have enough to share with the world you love.
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