The have nots?

DAILY BYTE

When I was in high school and learning to drive, after getting to know my style of driving, my instructor refused to call me by my real name… He gave me a new one: Timid. Some teenagers are rearing to be speed machines when they’re let loose behind the wheel, but no, not me. I lacked the need for speed – I lacked the boldness that you need to be a good first-time driver. One day, when overwhelmed in the middle of four-lane bumper-to-bumper traffic, I simply stopped the car and sat still, while my driving instructor yelled at me – You can’t do that! You’ll get us all killed! Take the power of the wheel and drive!! Driving instructors have emergency brakes, but apparently before instructing me, they failed to see the need for an emergency accelerator…

I have since significantly improved my driving skills. Warwick Triangle is an excellent training ground for boldness behind the wheel… But remembering that name, Timid, affects me.

It strikes me because it didn’t feel good – it wasn’t empowering to be defined by something that I lacked. I lacked boldness and courage in those moments, but that lack should not have defined the entirety of who I was as a person.

But we like to define people by what they lack. It makes us feel like we have more.

I’ve been realizing this week how often we really do label peoples’ identities by what they are without. We talk about the “home-less” – the people without homes. We talk about the “orphans” – the people without parents. The “needy” – people whose needs have not been filled. The list really goes on and on, and in the passage we find in 1 Kings this week, we hear about a “widow” – one without a husband. We see her at the beginning of this story being defined by what she lacks.

We’re told that the Word of the Lord commanded this widow to provide for the prophet Elijah, so you would think that she would be waiting with outstretched arms to welcome him into her home. But when Elijah arrives, we find her in a pathetic state. She is scraping together the last bits of what she has then to go lay down and die.

We find her to be the epitome of the “have nots.” She is not waiting with anticipation, empowered by the command that the Lord has given her. She seems to be completely burdened by her lack. As a widow, she would have been one of the most vulnerable and probably destitute members of that society. She was without even her most basic needs and practically crawling to her grave under the weight of that. Do we ever feel so burdened by our needs?

When asked to bring Elijah water, which she probably would have had access to, she acquiesces, but when Elijah boldly – brashly, really, asks that she also bring him some bread from her very own hand, she snaps.

She says, “I swear - I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” She says, look at me – I lack everything – I have nothing to give you. Don’t you see that this is who I am?

Is this who we are? People who lack enough food maybe, enough money, enough power, enough intelligence, enough talent? Is this who we define ourselves to be as individuals and as a church?

Stay tuned this week to explore more of how we see ourselves, how we label others, and how God sees us.

FOCUS READING

1 Kings 17:8-12 (NRSV)

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”