What DO You Have?
On Tuesday evening, Elder Joe Hicks shared the devotional with the finance committee. He reminded us of the powerful story of the Widow’s Oil that Didn’t Run Out (2 Kings 4).
In Debt and Desperate
For those who don’t remember, it is the account of a woman whose husband was a faithful prophet that died. As a result of his untimely death, his family found itself in dire straits.
The creditors were coming. In those days debt collectors didn’t just ring your phone off the hook and garnish your wages; they were coming to take her sons as slaves!
If her sons were taken, her situation would only have worsened exponentially. Women did not own property, except through their husbands and sons. (Remember the significance of Naomi needing a kinsman redeemer after her husband and sons had died?) If this woman’s sons were taken, what would she do?
What Do You Have?
The prophet Elisha asks her a simple question: “What do you have in your house?” He does not ask her to tell him about everything she has lost? Elisha is not looking for the details of her sob story? He got that part. That’s how she came to him. She told him how her husband was a good man, a prophet like him. And she told him all the terrible stuff that was going to happen if something didn’t change quickly. Elisha is not even trying to understand the nitty gritty of how she got into the situation.
The truth is that since the past is the past and we don’t have the ability to change the past through time travel, the thing to focus on is the present. Her husband the prophet, faithful as he was, was dead. That wasn’t going to change, nor was their debt magically going awa
You know, you can’t go back, don’t you? As much as people would like to get a “do over,” things just don’t work that way in real life.
That’s the reason why we ought to do the best we can while we can. But even when we’ve done our best, things don’t always go as we would like. Sometimes we live with losses that we simply cannot change.
I do not know why or how this woman’s husband died. Even today, when people lose loved ones they spend so much time racking their brains trying to figure out what they could have done differently, blaming a caregiver or some doctor or nurse for what they should have done differently, but at the end of the day, no matter what conclusion you come to, the loved one is gone. You cannot change the past.
Elisha does not ask about the past. He asks her, What’s left? After the loss and the fallout that followed the loss, what’s left? What do you have in your house?
That’s a powerful question, Elisha! And it’s one we all ought to ask ourselves. We’ve wasted money in failed investments, squandered it on toys that are now broken, given it to undisciplined relatives who didn’t appreciate it. Yep. And it’s gone. Now that we’ve acknowledged that. The question is, what’s left?
The question shifts our focus from mourning and whining over that which we cannot change to an empowered focus on that which remains.
So, you are probably saying, but what I have left ain’t much! Join this widow. She didn’t have much either. In verse 2 she says, in essence, I ain’t got much, just a little oil.
Did you know that God doesn’t need much to work with? The Bible says in the Creation account that on Day 1, the earth was “without form and void.” But God made a world, didn’t He? Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that if we have just a little faith, faith the size of a mustard seed, we can tell mountains to get out of our way!
So, the admonishment to us is to take inventory of what’s left and let God work with that. Do it with your finances. Do it with your gifts and talents. Do it with the years of life that remain. Let’s do it as a church. My mama used to say, “Ain’t no need of cryin’ over spilled milk.”
What do you have left? I love how the song writer said it, “Little becomes much when you place it in the Master’s hands.”
In Debt and Desperate
For those who don’t remember, it is the account of a woman whose husband was a faithful prophet that died. As a result of his untimely death, his family found itself in dire straits.
The creditors were coming. In those days debt collectors didn’t just ring your phone off the hook and garnish your wages; they were coming to take her sons as slaves!
If her sons were taken, her situation would only have worsened exponentially. Women did not own property, except through their husbands and sons. (Remember the significance of Naomi needing a kinsman redeemer after her husband and sons had died?) If this woman’s sons were taken, what would she do?
What Do You Have?
The prophet Elisha asks her a simple question: “What do you have in your house?” He does not ask her to tell him about everything she has lost? Elisha is not looking for the details of her sob story? He got that part. That’s how she came to him. She told him how her husband was a good man, a prophet like him. And she told him all the terrible stuff that was going to happen if something didn’t change quickly. Elisha is not even trying to understand the nitty gritty of how she got into the situation.
The truth is that since the past is the past and we don’t have the ability to change the past through time travel, the thing to focus on is the present. Her husband the prophet, faithful as he was, was dead. That wasn’t going to change, nor was their debt magically going awa
You know, you can’t go back, don’t you? As much as people would like to get a “do over,” things just don’t work that way in real life.
That’s the reason why we ought to do the best we can while we can. But even when we’ve done our best, things don’t always go as we would like. Sometimes we live with losses that we simply cannot change.
I do not know why or how this woman’s husband died. Even today, when people lose loved ones they spend so much time racking their brains trying to figure out what they could have done differently, blaming a caregiver or some doctor or nurse for what they should have done differently, but at the end of the day, no matter what conclusion you come to, the loved one is gone. You cannot change the past.
Elisha does not ask about the past. He asks her, What’s left? After the loss and the fallout that followed the loss, what’s left? What do you have in your house?
That’s a powerful question, Elisha! And it’s one we all ought to ask ourselves. We’ve wasted money in failed investments, squandered it on toys that are now broken, given it to undisciplined relatives who didn’t appreciate it. Yep. And it’s gone. Now that we’ve acknowledged that. The question is, what’s left?
The question shifts our focus from mourning and whining over that which we cannot change to an empowered focus on that which remains.
So, you are probably saying, but what I have left ain’t much! Join this widow. She didn’t have much either. In verse 2 she says, in essence, I ain’t got much, just a little oil.
Did you know that God doesn’t need much to work with? The Bible says in the Creation account that on Day 1, the earth was “without form and void.” But God made a world, didn’t He? Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that if we have just a little faith, faith the size of a mustard seed, we can tell mountains to get out of our way!
So, the admonishment to us is to take inventory of what’s left and let God work with that. Do it with your finances. Do it with your gifts and talents. Do it with the years of life that remain. Let’s do it as a church. My mama used to say, “Ain’t no need of cryin’ over spilled milk.”
What do you have left? I love how the song writer said it, “Little becomes much when you place it in the Master’s hands.”
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