🌿BREATHE TRUTH🌿
As he (Elijah) arrived at the gates of the village, he saw a widow gathering sticks, and he asked her, “Would you please bring me a little water in a cup? As she was going to get it, he called to it, “Bring me a bite of bread, too.” —1 Kings 17:10-11
🌿LIVE THE REAL TRUTH🌿
In shock, the widow informs Elijah of her dire situation. Don’t you know all I have left is a minuscule bit of flour and cooking oil? I’m here collecting sticks to cook a final meal before my starving child and I die. In our limited capacity, we have limited vision of how to get to the table of God. But God doesn’t leave us to famish within our limitations. He frees us to experience and eat of His limitless grace.
This story isn’t simply how the widow’s provisions never run out thereafter because of providence. Miracles are good, but the mission is greater.
God takes our scarcity and makes it sacred.
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Helpless, but held.
In Elijah’s time, widowed women are among those surviving at the bottom of the prevailing social hierarchy. They have meager means to fend for themselves. Of all the people God sends Elijah to, it is to one of the most helpless members of society.
The woman’s response to Elijah reflects her loss of resolve. Help has left. No means of support. Hope is lost. No measure of solution. But this entire time, someone is holding her, and she is being held and led to the table of God. In our darkest moments of being alone, and being physically and spiritually hungry, God holds us together, hinges our heart to His, and handles our hunger by meeting our scarcity where we need Him the most.
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Empty, but empowered.
We come to the table before God empty-handed. We leave empowered. Our story is not about impoverishment, but empowerment.
The woman arrives not expecting anything from God. She approaches the table with a sense of abandonment that she has nothing in this world and will leave this world with nothing. But she walks away empowered in abundance. Poor in the world’s eyes. Prosperous in Christ. Vagrantly despaired. Extravagantly defined.
Every single day when this widow goes to her cupboard to reach for her jars of oil and flour, she is coming to the table of God. Every day, God is pulling up a chair for her, and she is dining with Him. At the table where we encounter God face-to-face, we depart luxuriously full and lavishly filled.
Beloved, come to the table with your most pressing and prevailing needs. In utter dependence of God for all that He is and for all that we are not. Our God is setting an opulent feast for us, sufficient for today, and He is melting our scarcity into the sacred.
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©️ 2019 Jordan Su