Imagine, your husband has died, and only you and your son are living through a famine. There’s only a little meal and oil left. You know you can’t get more, and you know that when you use the scant remainder in a couple of hours that you and your son will very likely die in the next few days.

As you’re out gathering sticks to prepare what will be your and your son’s last meal, with the heaviness weighing on your heart, a man calls out and asks for some water. As you grab some for him, he asks for a morsel of bread. You very clearly explain your situation:

“As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”

Then the man looks at you and replies:

“Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.”

What would your response be? You’ve very clearly told this man that you have very little food, so little, in fact, that your last meal is going to be in a few hours, and you know that you and your son are about to die. And then he doubles down on wanting food from you, and claims that you won’t run out until God sends rain. Would you give the last of what you have to a stranger?

She had nothing to lose, and yet, if the man was truthful, would have so much to gain. She went and did what the man said, and the Bible states that they ate for many days:

“And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah.”

If God asks you to give the last of what you had, would you? Would you be like the widow woman, who trusted what Elijah had told her about God providing for her and her son? She was faced with the knowledge of how much food was in her house, and she knew it wasn’t enough for the two of them. But then God asked her to provide for Elijah – realistically there wasn’t enough. But when she trusted God to provide, He did. Until the famine ended, she never ran out of meal or oil, as a reminder of how she was willing to sacrifice the last of what she had when God asked her to.

This account comes from 1 Kings 17:8-16, King James Version.

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