(Please note that the following is not a substitute for preaching His Word. And I also understand that there are roles/callings/Callings for people. Faithful Christians cannot be everywhere and do everything all the time while others are not doing anything. Further, because we are to see/judge fruit, we do have the right to challenge those who are not making effort to be fruitful in their walk with God. So just a brief preface.)
Just a quick thought that came to me during prayer this morning. Recently I wrote about visiting and serving the least of these. So let us quickly ponder some things that when we read 1 Kings 17 that we may overlook.
The widow is gathering sticks to make a fire to bake a little bread so her and her son will eat it and die. We often imagine a woman in her 60s or so when we read it (or at least mid-40s). But in those days Jewish “women” when they got married were often in their middle teens or perhaps late teens. That was reality folks. So as to avoid making this into a more taboo point, let’s just say the woman (before she was married and eventually became a widow) was 18 when she got married. And with her being a widow, obviously her husband died not too long after they were married. So we have an 18-year-old woman who gets married. So let’s use some math here.
She has a son after she got married. We will give the husband and wife a “honeymoon period” without them having a child too quickly, so let’s assume for argument’s sake that it was a year before she became pregnant. So she is 19 when she shares the happy news. Further and obviously, she has to have a husband to have gotten her pregnant. So she is still married and not a widow yet.
Back in those days women stayed at home. They may have had a little bit of income for selling cloth or something; but often she stayed home to be a keeper of the house. So she didn’t have an independent financial lifestyle to support herself before she got married and certainly not after her husband passed. Even if she did, it failed during the famine. So she relied on her husband to provide. They also didn’t have social programs back then that we have today. There was no Medicaid, CHiPS, food stamps, WIC, job placement company.
So she is 19, married, and pregnant. For round numbers, she is 20 when she has the child. Small children cannot do much, even back in those days. Despite them being involved, a small child physically was incapable of plowing, building, or whatever trade job to provide an annual salary to take care of a family. So most likely and we will again use round numbers, let’s make the child 7 when Elijah steps into the scene. So the (widow) woman is 27. So sometime during those seven years her husband died. And with her gathering sticks and due to the drought with things not being fruitful in the fields to glean the corners/edges of the field, I would have to guess her husband has been dead for perhaps a year or a little longer but not by much.
If the story ended there, we would have a fairly rounded picture. But we forget something. Jewish people at that time had a custom: if first husband was unable to produce a son or even there was a child, nearest relative had to redeem her. So it is obligated that the next brother (nearest kin, a kinsman (think Boaz and Ruth)) would take her in to marry and raise a child. So without her being able to marry again, that means either (a) her husband had no brothers or (b) her husband’s brothers also died (or were too young to marry).
So you have a 27-year-old widow woman with a small son aged 7 who they have no living relative to take them in. A common trait—even if suppressed by women's lib—in women is security. Her father provided it to her prior to marriage. It was expected that the daughter's husband would take over to provide security. So all her life she had a man to provide. She had a man who brought stability. She had a man who didn’t allow her to fear for her future (think of Job's wife's reaction when they lost it all). But she is a widow with zero resources and assistance. Compound that with there was a famine that made fruitful tree branches to be dead sticks and to only be used for a fire. Given that she has a little bit of meal left even with portioning/rationing it for a time, the best she could have saved is for almost a year or barely longer (remember that they glean the fields after the harvesters and stored it for roughly a year). So even if she had plenty or a decent amount when the famine began and/or she initially had financial means to pay for flour if she ran out of her food stores, she had no money and fields were dry and dead. And if her present time wasn't already bleak enough, remember that farming is investing into the future. With dead/failed crops, that means no seed for next year's crops, which means next won't look any better for anyone. A very hopeless situation. And this famine happened for three and a half years and she and her son (if they survived) had to endure more time of the famine as the Bible shares!
I paint this picture of facts to illustrate how desperate she was. So when we tie in God’s provision along with James’ “to visit widows and orphans”, we are seeing people who truly have no hope, no chance, and certainly no way to pay back in gratitude. This is why I truly believe that after the widow (in the New Testament) gave her two minas and knowing God’s nature to provide for faithful women who trust Him, the widow was blessed very soon after her giving all.
Often our attitude toward those who cannot do for themselves is because they are lazy or unmotivated or that they’ve wasted resources on prodigal living. But if we have learned anything from taking a microscopic view of the widow in 1 Kings 17, where do we find our hearts toward those in nursing homes, or the single mom/dad trying to balance parental roles and work, or the disabled who physically are unable to do much to take care of themselves? Do we, like the initial two religious men in the story of the Samaritan walk on by or the Pharisee who thumped his chest with his piety for his religious provision. Or do we, with compassion and perhaps empathy and gratitude, extend a hand of help and mercy?
There will be those who are unable this Thanksgiving. They may have their meager meal—if they are that fortunate—while we sit with our platefuls to overeat, take a nap, visit family/friends, or watch a sports game. There are those in prison are away from family, those in nursing homes (I recently saw their calendar for their planned Thanksgiving event and I almost wept) who have no one to visit them, the elderly and lonely next-door neighbor who hasn’t had a “thanksgiving” meal in years let alone one shared with someone, or the college student who isn’t able to go home to visit family (due to lack of finances, too great of a distance, or lack of a working vehicle). To these people, Thanksgiving is just another lonely day while the rest of us are warmed and filled.
What does God see? What does God hear? If we indeed are Christians, what are we going to do about with what God takes notice of?