18. The Woman Who Shared Her Last Loaf

(1 Kings 17)

In a land where no rain had fallen for long months the grass and flowers were withered, the fruit trees were dead, the grain-fields and gardens were hardened and parched, and the streams were almost dried up. In the time of this fearful famine a poor woman looked into her jar of flour and cruse of oil, and saw that they were almost empty. She said: “There is just enough flour to make one more little cake, and just enough oil to mix it. I will go and gather a few sticks and bake this little cake for my boy and myself, and we will eat it and die.” She went out to gather the sticks, when she heard some one speak. She looked up and saw a strange man standing near. He was tired and worn and dusty, as though he had been walking many miles in the hot sun. He said to her, “Fetch me, I pray you, a little water, that I may drink.” She forgot for a moment how hungry and sad she was, and started at once toward her house to get the water for him, when he called to her, “Bring me, I pray you, a morsel of bread in your hand.” She turned back with a sigh and said: “O sir, truly I have not a cake; I have only a handful of meal in the jar, and a little oil in the cruse; and now I am gathering two sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my boy that we may eat it and die.” The man said: “Fear not; go and do as you have said, but make me a little cake first, and bring it out here to me, and afterward make a cake for yourself and your boy. For Jehovah, the God of Israel says, ‘The jar of meal shall not be empty, neither shall the little bottle of oil be empty, until it rains upon the earth.’”

She stood and looked at this strange man with his strange request—to share her very last piece of bread. She did not know who he was, nor who the God was he spoke of; she only knew that this man with the tired face was hungry too, and he had not even one piece of bread, and she said to herself, “I will share what we have with him.” She went back into her kitchen, kindled the fire with the sticks, scraped the last bit of flour from the jar, and poured in the last drop of oil from the cruse; but, when she had taken out enough for the little cake and looked into the jar and cruse, there was just as much flour and oil as before. She made the cake, took it to Elijah, God’s wonderful prophet, and she, and he, and her son had plenty to eat from the jar of meal that did not empty and the cruse of oil that did not fail all the days of that famine. And it all came about because that good woman, though hungry herself, was willing to share the little she had with another who was in need.