Girl, Use What You’ve Got
Today as I snuggle in with my morning coffee the cicadas are screaming all around me. Southern mornings are like this in the summer, the air stands still, the birds sing, the cicadas scream, and the earth feels loud.
But, something else was loud today too.
My heart and mind are whirling, I feel pulled in a million directions, I have conflicting feelings about just about everything, it is loud in my mind.
As I sit down to flip open my Bible, more out of habit than intention, I check the clock thinking “I really don’t have a ton of time this morning,” but even in my busy heart-God breaks through.
I open to 2 Kings 4 and, you can read all the scriptures, here is the general rundown.
In verses 1-18 we meet two incredibly different women that Elisha encounters as he is out in the world. The first is a widow who is left with all of her husband’s debt. The man to whom the debt is owed is not interested in mercy; no, he wants payment, and he is willing to take it in the form of her two sons as his servants. She is desperate, destitute, alone, and afraid. When she sees Elisha, he is her last hope, she begs out to him to help her. He asked her a simple question, “what do you have in the house?” (vs 2). She responds, a small jar of oil. GREAT he seems to say! Collect as many vessels as you can and just start pouring, and don’t stop.
I am not a genius, but I know from baking that if a recipe calls for a cup of oil, and I only have a half cup of oil, it doesn’t matter how long I hold the oil upside down pouring, that is all that is there. But God, and only God! She starts pouring and it keeps coming. In fact she pours enough oil that she fills every vessel and she has enough to sell to both settle her debts, keep her sons, AND live on the rest. A miracle that would continue to last.
The other woman we meet is a wealthy woman. She feeds Elisha a meal when he passes by but, once she realizes he will be coming this way fairly often says, “And she said to her husband, ‘Behold, now, I know that this is a holy man of God who is continually passing our way. Let us make him a small room on the roof of our house and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that whenever he comes to us he can go there’” (vs 9).
She wasn’t seeking praise, she wasn’t after a miracle, she was just being faithful, being hospitable, doing what she could with what she had. Elisha asked his servant what he could do to repay the woman. His servant informs him that she has no children. So, Elisha calls the woman to him and tells her she will have a son. She actually recoils from this telling him to not promise her such a joy, telling him she wouldn’t even dream of asking for such a thing because the pain of it not happening would be too great. He just tells her by that time next year she will hold a baby, and well… she did.
We don’t often talk about women in the Bible. And, unfortunately, when we do, it is often just as supporting characters.
But, God has always seen woman as more than that.
Often it was women who were quietly keeping the faith when the whole world was going crazy, women who were doing the work of the Lord, women who were living their lives in-spite of incomprehensible hardship.
I love these women in 2 Kings, they reach across the centuries and speak straight to my heart. They offer such a stark contrast to each other, and yet they were both seen by an almighty God.
One is so poor she is about to lose everything, one is so rich she not only has few earthly needs but she can quickly and generously give to other.
One has two children she is fighting to keep, one has never held a child, will not even ask for one, that she so desperately wants.
One lives her life mostly in obscurity while the other is the center of social life.
It is so easy to miss these two women-to just view them as short chapters in Elisha’s story, but what if God saw Elisha as just a small chapter in their lives?
I think, more than their differences, what these women have in common are the things that speak to my soul.
First, both are women in a society that greatly dishonored and undervalued women. The widow had no husband, no power, and no provider. She is poor, beyond poor in a patriarchal society that left her no avenue to work, and she and her children were viewed as disposable, worth no more than a few dollars of a debt. The other was protected, to some extent by her wealth, she seems to have had a fairly supportive husband, and that would have insulated her from some of the harsher aspects of the world. But, as a woman with no children in that society, she would have known her situation was tenuous, depending on her husband’s life, she would have been looked down on by others as not fulfilling her purpose. Similar to Naomi in the book of Ruth, without a husband to protect her, her life would have radically changed-on her own without her husband she was viewed as nothing.
Secondly, they both made use of what they had at their disposal…or the Lord used what they already had. Elisha asked the widow, what do you have? And that was what God used to redeem her. Similarly the wealthy woman used her wealth to care for the prophet. God didn’t send them on a journey to become or own more, he simply prompted them to look around at what was already there.
Finally, they were both in desperate need of a Savior. One had an immediate, crushing need. The other had a long term ache in her soul. But, God saw both, He cared deeply about both, and ultimately He did more than either could have asked or imagined. The widow just needed to pay her debt, but God gave her so much more, “she came and told the man of God, and he said, ‘Go sell the oil and pay your debts and you and your sons can live on the rest’” (Emphasis mine). He didn’t just get her out of a harsh place, he gave her hope for the future. The wealthy woman lived obediently, even in her pain, and God saw her and gave her the deepest desires of her heart. Wow.
This morning, I realized I often feel like both of these women, sometimes I feel like both of them at the same time.
I often feel undervalued, underestimated, unappreciated, while somehow also feeling overwhelmed, overextended, and overworked. I think a lot of women feel this way.
I wish I could say I immediately cried out for God and trusted him to answer, but I don’t. I usually first listen to a world and society that tells me to be more, strive more, make more, learn more.
I look “outside” my house for the answer instead of asking God, “what do I already have inside my house?” “What can YOU do with this?”
What do you have that you think, “this is all I have…”?
Maybe it is your home, your voice. Maybe you can grow beautiful flowers that bring joy to someone, maybe you have time to sit and pray. Maybe you can paint, or speak, or be present with someone who desperately needs a friend. Whatever it is, will you silence the world that says you need to get more first and just say “this is what I have and I will use it.”
Today, I will silence the noise, I will cry out to Him.
I will open the cabinets of my soul and say this is all I have.
I will just start pouring, or maybe just start building, and I will wait.
I don’t have a lot today but I have this heart, my mind, my journal, my Bible, my marriage, my home-and today I will just say, “God I am pouring, you tell me when to stop.”