The Widow’s Oil
4 Now a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to [a]Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord; and the creditor has come to take my two children to be his slaves.” 2 Elisha said to her, “What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?” And she said, “Your maidservant has nothing in the house except a jar of oil.” 3 Then he said, “Go, borrow vessels at large for yourself from all your neighbors, even empty vessels; do not get a few. 4 And you shall go in and shut the door behind you and your sons, and pour out into all these vessels, and you shall set aside what is full.” 5 So she went from him and shut the door behind her and her sons; they were bringing the vessels to her and she poured. 6 When the vessels were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” And he said to her, “There is not one vessel more.” And the oil stopped. 7 Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debt, and you and your sons can live on the rest.”
Some things are just too much for us to handle, and this was the case for the widow. Could her husband have done better and not left his wife and children with a mountain of debt? Probably, but that was done and over, and now we have a desperate woman who is about to lose her children to the creditor.
The best part of Elisha’s response is “do not get a few.” Don’t limit God with your own mindset of what He can do and don’t let other people scare you away from following God’s call either. Dream bigger, think bigger, and see what He will do. The neighbors had to think she was a little crazy borrowing all those vessels, and I can imagine one of them running over to a friend’s house and saying, “did you hear about that new widow? What does she think she’s going to do with all the vessels we gave her?”
But she trusted Elisha and she trusted God, and He came through in a big way. Trust and obey, for there is no other way…