Elijah and the Widow

A story snuck into my consciousness on little spider's feet this morning. Right through the thin place between worlds it whispered. It's a Hebrew story, but there are similar tales in most spiritual traditions. It's about the relationship between us human beings and our prophets or our gods.

The prophet Elijah, so the tale goes, predicted a drought in the land in which he lived. God sent him into the desert to endure through this hard time, and he drank from a wadi and ate the food the ravens brought him.

When, after awhile, the wadi dried up, God came to Elijah again. "Go into the town of Zarephath," said God. "You'll find a widow there whom I have commanded to feed you."

Elijah went, and he found a widow at the gates gathering sticks. As was the custom, he asked her for a drink of water. When she brought it, he asked her for a little piece of bread as well.

Widows in Elijah's culture were the marginal people. Having no one to care for them, they had to rely on the kindness of their community for food. They were in essence beggars, and in lean times they were the first people to starve.

She told him she had no bread, only a bit of meal in a jar and some oil in a jug. She was, in fact, going home to cook this bit of food for herself and her son, and then, it being the last of their provisions, they would die.

So much, eh?, for God commanding her to feed the prophet. It doesn't seem she's heard this message. She is, in fact, in complete despair, at the end of her rope, without hope.

I met a woman a week or so ago who told me of a time in her life when she was without hope. "We all usually have a little hope hidden away somewhere," she told me. "To be without any hope at all is very different, very unusual. You know it when you are without hope." This widow is in that place. She is getting ready for herself and her child to end.

Elijah said to her, "Do not be afraid. Go ahead and do what you've planned, but first bring me a little cake of bread. When you've done that, make the cake for yourself and your son." Do not be afraid? Isn't the woman beyond fear? But there is only enough meal and oil for one cake, and yet he tells her to make two. "For the Lord God of Israel says the jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth."

I can imagine the woman standing there on the edge, once again, of hope. How painful that must have been for her -- like heat coming into frozen toes or a little food hitting a long-empty belly. She would have fought against the return of sensation, angry at being called back into life for such a flimsy promise. And yet called she was.

I imagine her weeping bitterly as she went home to do as the prophet asked her, telling herself it made little difference really if she and her son had a final meal or not, but knowing that giving up the grain and the oil was not what she was afraid of. No, she was afraid of the hope.

And of course the little jar of meal did not empty and the jug of oil did not fail. But I'll bet you that woman thought each morning, "What if today is the day the Lord fails me? What if I do something wrong and the promise is rescinded?" Every single day for the rest of the time of drought that woman, getting up with hope, had to also bear fear. Perhaps often she was able to tuck it away and trust in God's goodness, but it would have been there in some measure so long as she hoped.

How does the meal replenish itself in the jar? It is a miracle, perhaps directly from the hand of God, perhaps through the agency of a new and different relationship between the woman and her community -- after all, she was housing a prophet. Abundance is often a matter of sharing, without any plotting or control. Perhaps everybody in the town of Zarephath got a little more willing to give their last cake away, and so everybody found they had enough, just barely, to go around.

How do we replenish our belief in our dreams in a time of scarcity and danger? We have to open ourselves to God and the prophets that come to us out of the desert. And we have to take on the double burden of hope and fear.