Exquisite Despair: Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath
By: Evan Underbrink
Elijah, walking on the baked earth, hungry. He asks an old
woman for water, and she goes at once. She knows this man is a prophet of the
living God. He calls out and asks her for a bit of bread as well. How hungry
they both must have been. What spasms held in both their stomachs, and what
extra spasm held the woman’s heart as she told the prophet of her plan.
I like to imagine that the woman left her house, nursing the
aching death which was coming. She must have held a hundred thousand
temptations at bay in order to act: she could not think about her son never
marrying, nor her living to see grandchildren. She could, must not, let her
mind wander down paths of hope, that perhaps today the rains will, finally
come. Most of all, she could not let her heart betray her, that some help, any
help, would come.
If ever there was a best kind of despair, it was hers; for
she was both meticulous, and interruptible. Meticulous, each step of the plan
expressed: to gather the sticks, to make something for her and her son, and
after one last meal, to die. Each act was given the honor of deep ritual, each
thing a kind of faith-filled promise. Something similar occurs with the widow
before Christ, who gives her two small coins.
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| Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath Giobanni Lanfranco, circ. 1624 |
These things matter to the Lord, not because of their
intrinsic value, as anyone can see. And not primarily because they are acts of
sacrifice. The woman was ready to sacrifice herself and her son, and this would
have brought God no honor. They matter to the Lord, because God loves us, and
when we are God’s children, what we value and give to God is precious.
My mother once kept
for years a little picture I drew of a coffee cup. She framed it, and it sat
beside her coffee table. It was not a well-drawn coffee cup; but her love, and
my love, flowed out of it every time I passed by her reading, and saw that
little reminder that our precious gifts, given up, become a greater kind of
nourishment.
Ah, it is so hard to look at miracles! So simple to
allegorize, psychologize, literarily disembowel, or simply to let our eyes
glaze over the event, and turn back to the seemingly endless feed of
information which gluts our brains. What if it were true? Or perhaps we may say
what if it were real? All words are
within themselves not full up to the thing, but we can imagine: the old woman
goes each day to the flour jar, each day to the oil jug, with a prayer. When I
was young, I had assumed that repetition of holy things merely makes them dull;
that one must continue to “grow” in joy by moving to ever more complicated
expressions. And yet, there is no doubt in my mind that the old woman’s prayers
gained warm, nourishing layers of sweetness, and rich, decadent depths of
power, and did not grow one syllable beyond “thank you for this daily bread,”
until the rains came like sweet wine on parched throats.
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