When the vessels were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” And he said to her, “There is not another.” Then the oil stopped flowing.

In Elisha’s time, there was a woman whose husband had died. She and her children were left in dire straits financially. All that the widow had was a jar of oil. She turned to Elisha, the greatest prophet of the day, for help. Elisha told her to “borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not too few,” (2 Kings 4:3). He also told her to fill the vessels from her jar of oil. The oil kept flowing from the jar until all the vessels were full. Elisha then told her to sell the oil, pay her debts, and live on the rest.

Like the widow, you may be in deep trouble, left without any support. What will you do? Will you simply give up and not do anything at all? Will you keep doing what you have been doing and hope for the best? Will you try as hard as you can to reverse your circumstances on your own or with the help of friends? The widow didn’t do any of these things. The widow first turned to the Lord for help. She turned to Elisha, the Lord’s representative on the earth. She knew that only the Lord could truly help her. This woman may have had no specific idea of how the Lord could help, but she knew that He could. She knew that nothing is too hard for God (Genesis 18:14). She believed that God could and would do something for her. Even though things looked hopeless, she did not give up hope.

The widow’s story teaches us that the provision of the Lord, His ability to help, is unlimited. No doubt oil would have continued to flow from the jar if she had more vessels. After she saw what happened, she was probably sorry that she hadn’t borrowed even more of them. There was no limit on the Lord’s supply of oil. The only limit was the number of vessels the widow borrowed.

We should always remember that the Lord is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,” (Ephesians 3:20).

By John Huisman, friend of Bible League International