Abundance Left Over – 2 Kings 4:42-44

A text – 2 Kings 4:42-44

4:42 A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, “Give it to the people and let them eat.”

4:43 But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” So he repeated, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the LORD, ‘They shall eat and have some left.'”

4:44 He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the LORD.

A reflection:

Jesus’s feeding the thousands has some Old Testament foundation. In this short lesson from 2 Kings, Elisha the prophet, successor to the great Elijah, multiplied food, too.

Maybe it was because these two prophets, Elijah and Elisha, were trying to wrest the children of Israel away from worshipping Baal, the god of fertility and promise, but the miracles recorded in 2 Kings involved creating an abundance of food, child-bearing where there had been barrenness, and even the resurrection of a dead grown-up son of a family. Elijah and Elisha were proving by their work that the God of Israel was a God of abundance, not scarcity, and that one of God’s major themes was hospitality to the stranger.

Isn’t that what Jesus’s ministry was always working at, too? Our God is a God of abundance, and we need never worry about scarcity. Our God is a God of wholeness, without barriers such as church rules to gaining that wholeness (plenty of healings on the Sabbath, healing of unclean people like lepers and bleeding women). Our God is a God who doesn’t count your wrongs against you but lets you start afresh (Matthew and Zaccheus, the tax collectors for Rome). Everyone is welcome, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.

And just as in Elisha’s feeding of a great number from small provision, there will be abundance left over. Remember that. Abundance left over. Our God has always been a God with abundance left over.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for the many stories of how you provide abundantly for those who love you.  When the world teaches us, shouts at us to be afraid of the stranger and afraid we won’t have enough, you teach at us, repeatedly tell us that there will always be more than enough and that strangers are more than welcome.  Amen.