A jar of oil and a hand full of arrows
When the vessels were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel”
(2 Kings 4:6).
And the man of God was angry with him, and said, “You should have struck five or six times” (2 Kings 13:19).
It may not seem obvious, but these two scriptures teach us a lot about faith. In the first incident, a widow came to Elisha because her husband had died. She was in debt and to pay the debt her two sons were going to be taken into slavery. Elisha asked what she had in the house. All she had was a jar of oil. Elisha told her to collect as many empty vessels as she could, then to shut herself in her house with her sons. Finally, she had to pour the jar of oil into all the vessels. She obeyed his instructions completely, and every vessel was filled. Elisha told her to sell the oil, pay her debt and use the remaining money to support her and her children.
At the end of Elisha’s life, it wasn’t a poor widow who came to see him but Joash, the king of Israel. Joash respected Elisha and wept for the prophet, crying, “O my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and their horsemen!” These were virtually the same words Elisha cried out when Elijah was taken from him into heaven by a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:12). They marked both the beginning and the end of Elisha’s ministry of faith. Elisha wanted the king to have the same faith. His last act was to ask the king to take a bow, shoot an arrow through a window and strike the remaining arrows on the ground. This all symbolised the victory God wanted the king to have over his Syrian enemies. But he only struck the ground three times. Elisha was angry with the king and said, “You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck Syria till you had destroyed it! But now you will strike Syria only three times.”
There is a stark contrast between the widow and the king. The widow came in all her need to the only man who could save her. Elisha told her what to do, she acted in complete obedience, and her family was saved and blessed. Joash was a king. He loved and looked up to the great prophet. But he did not understand that the prophet wanted to bring him into the victory of faith. Elisha does everything to demonstrate that God wanted to bless the king, and guided him to act in faith. But Joash half-heartedly strikes the ground just three times. The widow did not run out of faith, but out of vessels to display it. The king ran out of faith.
We can have every support in our Christian lives and lean heavily upon others. I thank God for every spiritual brother and sister who has supported me in my pathway of faith. They encouraged me to have faith in God, to really trust Him and not to think that my smallness was an obstacle to God’s greatness: rather, to remember the words of Asa, king of Judah, “Lord, it is nothing for You to help, whether with many or with those who have no power; help us, O Lord our God, for we rest on You, and in Your name we go against this multitude. O Lord, You are our God; do not let man prevail against You!” (2 Chronicles 14:11).
“Simple faith honours God and God honours simple faith” (Mary Winslow, 1774–1854).
