I’ve been reading about Elisha the prophet in my morning Bible studies. I came across the account of the Widow’s Oil this morning. (2 Kings 4) Of course this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this account, but for some reason it hit me with fresh impact this morning.

Here’s the situation. Elisha is the most powerful prophet in the land at this time. That means God works through him in really powerful ways. There are clusters of prophets living here and there around the land, and he visits with them every so often. He goes to this one place, and a woman comes up to him. “My husband was a prophet but he died. And now his creditors are coming to take my two boys as slaves to pay our debts.”

Now, Elisha could have pulled coins from her ears if he’d wanted to. Seriously. But God had another way to save this lady. Elisha said, “What have you got in your house?” and she said, “Nothing except a little oil.” And he told her to go and borrow a BUNCH of jars from all her neighbors, and go inside her house and start filling all the jars. She and her boys did that, and the oil just kept flowing until all the jars were filled.

Apparantly after that she went into the oil business, and we all know how lucrative that profession is. When they sold all that oil, they had enough to pay off all their debts AND live on what was left!

I’ve been thinking about that. God could have tossed a pile of money in her lap. He could have urged someone else to pay her debts for her. He could have made her creditor forgive her debt. Instead, he took the tiny, insignificant thing she already had in her pantry, and multiplied it to meet her needs not only then, but for the rest of her life.

Sometimes I look around at what needs to be done and I’m overwhelmed. Enormous electric bills to be paid in the summer, and giant gas bills in the winter. Books to write with really, really tight deadlines and huge time constraints. A little bit of talent, when what is needed is a HUGE amount of talent to write this book well. A little, tiny, insignificant amount of time in which to accomplish a list of tasks as high as my ceiling. I could go on and on.

Now, God could fix all those problems at once, couldn’t he? I mean, he’s God. Instead, he tells me, “Well let’s see. Look around. What do you have that I can work with?” And then he takes those tiny things that I think are totally unequal to the task, and does amazing things with them. Sometimes I will stand in the middle of jars full of oil where there were none before, and think, “Wow! How did He do that?”

Cool, huh? So take a peek into your pantry today. What have you got hanging around in there? Pull it out and see what God can do with it. You never know!