random musings

ok, some of these are just for me, notes of thoughts that just occurred to me while reading, praying, or just in general thought. maybe i’ll come back and read them one day, and it will have a huge impact on me. maybe years after my death, someone will come across some mundane scribblings on an ancient internet, and find enough value to lump them all into a book, an e-version of oswald chambers. that would be flattering. most likely, i’ll have written out of the need to create, or sheer boredom, or whatever… but when reading one day from 2 kings 4, this struck me as out of the ordinary. i happened to be reading from the kjv, and the imagery that the archaic language uses sometimes makes a guy think.

a little background – a servant of elisha’s died, leaving a wife and four kids. the wife is in debt, and her creditors take two of her children as slaves. she approaches elisha, touting that her husband had followed God and served elisha to the end. now she is in debt and can’t provide for the family. elisha tells her to get all the pots and pans and jars she can find. when she has done so, he has her combine the contents of all the containers into one, and then from that one, she is miraculously able to fill all the others, with enough to sustain her and her family.

that brings a couple things to mind:
- she had a task to do. elisha didn’t tell her what was going to happen. this might have seemed an odd request, but had she known what was about to happen, would she have stopped gathering the containers when she did? or would she have gone out, begged and borrowed, even from people she didn’t know?
- the contents were filled, but only to their capacity. elisha, serving as God’s agent, filled the contents of all the vessels, but only as many as she gathered. when looking for a blessing from God, how much room do we give Him to bless us? are we actively pursuing other venues, other vessels, through which God will supply every need?
- she got what she needed. it doesn’t say she got rich off this, she received what she needed to provide for the family, and that was it.