Elisha replied to [the woman], “How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?”
“Your servant has nothing there at all,” she said, “except a small jar of olive oil.”
2 Kings 4:2 (NIV)

Almost 40 years ago, I worshipped one Sunday with a local gathering of African-American brothers and sisters. It was awesome. The pastor gave a powerful message in the preaching style of their tradition, in which the main lesson of the message is boiled down to one memorable phrase that gets repeated repeatedly. By the time you walk out, there is no doubt that you know what the message of the morning was. In fact, I still remember it almost 40 years later, and it rose up from my memory banks as I meditated on today’s chapter.

The message that morning was from the story of Moses. Moses keeps telling God of his insufficiency to do what God is asking him to do, God keeps assuring Moses that He’s got more than enough to provide for whatever Moses lacks. The pastor boiled the message down to this: “You’ve got to use what you’ve got!”

Today’s chapter contains four episodes that initially feel like a loose collection of Elisha stories, but together form something much richer. The chapter keeps putting human emptiness beside divine abundance.

A poor widow can’t pay her late husband’s debts. All she has is one jar of oil. Elisha tells her to gather as many empty jars as she can beg, borrow, or steal. God fills them all with oil until they run out of empty jars.

A rich Shunnamite woman who regularly provided generous hospitality to Elisha is barren. Her husband is old. She is in a precarious position should he die. Elisha tells her that within a year, she will give birth to a son. Then, when the son dies, God uses Elisha to raise him from the dead.

By the way, I love that the Great Story put these two women next to one another in the text. A poor woman has no means to pay a debt. A rich woman has no son. As different as they might look on the socio-economic surface, they both have an emptiness that money cannot solve.

In the third episode, an ignorant chef cooks up some stew for the company of prophets with wild gourds he found, but he didn’t know what they were. The prophets cry, “There’s DEATH in the pot!” Elisha miraculously makes it edible.

In the final episode, Elisha both echoes God’s past provision of manna in the desert and foreshadows Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and fishes. With 20 barley loaves made from firstfruits, Elisha feeds a hundred men and has plenty of leftovers.

For being in the book of Kings, it’s fascinating that there’s not one king, military commander, or political connection in today’s chapter. Four ordinary people dealing with ordinary problems in life. There’s no money to pay a debt. There’s no son to receive an old man’s inheritance. There’s nothing to eat if the stew is poisonous. There’s nothing to eat because the cupboard is bare. Common problems of everyday people.

As I meditated on this, my heart kept returning to the poor, indebted widow. Elisha asks the widow, “What do you have in your house?” Her instinct is to answer: “Nothing.” Then she remembers. “Well…there is this one jar of oil.” And that becomes everything.

That resonates with me so deeply. I confess that I tend to measure possibilities by what I lack. I don’t have enough money, enough influence, or enough energy. I’m too old. I don’t have enough experience. I missed my opportunity. I don’t know the right people.

I don’t have enough.

But God’s question isn’t “What don’t you have?” It’s more “What do you have in the house?”

And then Elisha sends her to find as many empty jars as possible. The widow gathers emptiness. One empty vessel after another. Then she closes the door. God fills them.

Emptiness isn’t always the obstacle to God’s work. Sometimes emptiness is the capacity for it.

The Shunammite has an empty womb.
The bedroom holds a lifeless child.
The stew pot becomes unusable.
The hungry men have empty stomachs.

Everywhere you look in today’s chapter, there is some version of an empty vessel, and God keeps filling them. I’ve learned along this life journey that I can’t naively think that God miraculously reverses every loss along the way. God does not miraculously fix every financial crisis, heal every child, or multiply every insufficient resource. But today’s chapter does challenge my instinct to equate my insufficiency with God’s inability.

In fact, today’s chapter suggests that the place where I say “there isn’t enough” may be precisely where faith begins. Not because I pretend the jar isn’t empty.
But because I bring the empty jar to God. I shouldn’t despise what little I have.
I shouldn’t hide empty vessels. I shouldn’t confuse “I can’t” with “God can’t.”

As a preacher once repeatedly cried almost 40 years ago, “You’ve got to use what you’ve got!”

I need to bring what I’ve got. I also have to bring what I haven’t got. Because throughout this remarkable chapter, God appears entirely untroubled by empty things.

He seems rather fond of filling them.

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