Borrowed Vessels
When you're desperate, you usually have a picture of how God should solve the problem.
I didn't know what was going through her mind when she cried out to the prophet. It seemed she was screaming for deliverance from the ruin waiting at her doorstep.
What did she think he would do?
Maybe she thought Elisha would give her money.
Or maybe instruct the creditor to give her more time.
Maybe tell him not to take her sons
Atleast anything except,
"What do you have in your house?"
What kind of question is that?
The house is the problem.
The house is where the lack lives.
The house is where the cupboards are empty.
The house is where she had probably searched ten times already, hoping something new would appear.
And yet the miracle began there.
She asked for deliverance.
He asked if she had vessels.
Honestly, it would have been easier to believe if he had called down provision from the sky.
Perhaps if he had conjured wine from thin air.
Anything but this.
Anything but taking the little she had left and asking her to trust God with it.
But out of insufficiency flowed Providence.
From scarcity flowed abundance.
From one small pot flowed enough.
It flowed and flowed.
Into borrowed vessels.
Get Yvonne Carter’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Into empty spaces.
Into places prepared to receive.
And just as suddenly as it had started, when there was no more room,
it stayed.
Not stopped.
Stayed.
I love that word.
Stayed.
As if it had been willing to keep flowing all along.
As if the limitation was never the oil.
It was the room.
The oil stayed because there was no more room.
And I wonder.
How many times has God been willing to pour abundance through nearly empty cups, but we are too focused on how insufficient they seem?
Too afraid that if we let go of the little we have left, we might be left with nothing at all.
I wonder how long she had been saving that oil.
Protecting it.
Stretching it.
Looking at it and saying,
"This is all I have left. I can't touch it."
I'm glad she let God hold it.
I can almost see the relief settling into her heart as vessel after vessel filled from what had once seemed like an insufficient pot of oil.
She came to the prophet fearing loss.
She left with more than enough.
Perhaps that is the mystery of surrender.
The things we guard most tightly are often the very things God wants to multiply.
It seems small things are treasured in sacred hands.
I’m hoping you enjoy reading through this piece….Sacred Hands hold Small Things very well, maybe the All sufficient one is not scared of insufficiency…..❤️❤️
