EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH
Divine economy fills needs
By H. M. Wyeth
It was not hot enough outside the trench. Down inside, where my fellow archaeology students and I worked, cut off from even the desultory breeze, it was like an oven. The first thing we did at the end of each workday was to drink about a gallon of cold water each.
The day that I finished my job early and went to get some water for my friends, imagine how I felt when the only container on hand was an 8-ounce soda bottle. Still, I thought it would help a little as I headed back to the site, careful to keep even one precious drop from spilling.
When the first guy I handed the bottle to drank half of it, I was furious. "Doesn't he care about the other 11 people who are just as thirsty," I grumbled. "How can anyone be so rude?"
In the days when people such as those whose culture we were digging up were writing the Bible, God spoke in phrases that translators rendered into majestic prose, such as "Be not afraid nor dismayed, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord" (II Chronicles 20:15, 17). In the 20h century, God simply said to me, "Shut up, I know what I'm doing. Just watch."
So I put the mental tape loop on "pause" and just watched the bottle go from hand to mouth to hand around the circle of thirsty diggers. Everyone got a drink, and there was even a bit left for me after the rounds. I do not think any water ever tasted as good or as satisfying. Apparently it satisfied everyone else as well, for that day there was no scramble for the faucet after we packed up our tools.
What happened? In II Kings, Chapter 4, is a story about a woman whose plight was far worse than mine. Her husband died, leaving her with debts that she could not pay. Someone came to take her sons into servitude. She ran frantically to Elisha, the prophet. Maybe she hoped he would give her money, hide the boys or even curse the creditor. She must have been surprised when he said, "What shall I do for thee? What hast thou in the house?"
Taken aback, she replied that she had nothing but a little jar of oil, perhaps about the size of a modern-day soda bottle. He told her to borrow jugs from the neighbors and pour oil into them. It seemed crazy, but she did it and found that the oil from her bottle filled every one of the borrowed vessels. She then sold the oil, a commodity much in demand in her culture, and repaid the creditor. She even had enough left over for her family to live on.
A common element of both stories is that when God fills a need, human measurements and limitations lose significance. Another is that clinging to a measured sense of provision, whether it takes form in a bottle or bank account, prevents understanding of how the divine economy works.
When Jesus admonished his students not to hide their light in Matthew 5:15, he did not use an analogy of putting a lamp into a closet or under a bed, but of concealing it in a measuring basket. Later in his ministry, he demonstrated his unlimited sense of God's provision and the practical consequences of this unmeasured faith.
Heu'ionalani "Meph" Wyeth is an assistant to the Christian Science Committee on Publication for Hawai'i and lives on Kaua'i.
