SDfAoWOP: the Widow

Day Thirty-One

I Kings 17:12

And she said, “As The Lord lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”

Your house is small and spare and clean. You have a table and a chair and some stones for a cooking fire. Your clothes are worn and mended, your thin hands shaky, the narrow places of your heart consumed with resignation and worry. The view out your window is stunning, but that is the only thing that remains, besides your child. No husband, no rain, no crops, nothing. The reasonable and obvious plan is to stir up your fire one more time, cook the little bit that's left, the handful of flour, the drizzle of oil from the jug, holding it up for a long while over your kneeling bowl, eking out one last drop. And then to die.

Most often you have the wrong expectation, the wrong hope, wanting what you cannot have, being dissatisfied with the over abundance of your stuff and the poverty of your spirit. But once, to look around and see the dessert encroaching, the barren land yielding nothing at all, the mute hungry look in your child's eye, to see it as it is, and to despair, it is the reasonable way. You cannot save yourself. You cannot make it rain. You cannot overpower the violence and destruction and sin of the world to bring good out of evil. You can only sweep your floor one more time and gather your sticks.

But God can. Sometimes he does. Gather the sticks, then, form the flour and oil together, bake the bread, break it in half and give first to the one God sends. Tithe the dusting of flour spread sparsely at the bottom of your jar. Tithe a measure of your heart, the poverty of who you are, your helplessness, your hopelessness. Because The Lord is a provider. He gives life, he gives enough, he gives himself, all of himself. The jar doesn't run out, the jug of oil does not dry up, the measure of your need is given by The Lord himself, his own body, broken and half, given for you.