Remember this story?

Does anyone remember this story:

Jesus met a widow who was about to lose her sons to slavery because she was so poor. All she has was a jar of oil. Jesus told her to get as many jars as she could find and start pouring the oil into them. The oil didn't stop until all the jars were full. She sold the oil instead of her sons and lived happily on the rest.

Or this:
Jesus stayed regularly with a woman and her husband. They actually built a room on their roof for him to stay in. The couple couldn't have children, but Jesus told them, 'this time next year, you'll have a son'. And they did! But a few years later the son got ill and died. When Jesus found out, he went to the house and prayed for the boy. Then he stretched himself out by the boy's dead body, and the boy grew warm. He prayed again, stretched again... the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes!

Or this:

Jesus was eating stew with his followers, and they discovered a poisonous herb in the pot. But Jesus threw in some flour and it became safe to eat.

Or this:
Jesus was with his followers and they were hungry. A man came with twenty loaves of bread. Jesus told him to give the loaves to the men to eat. 'How can I give this to a hundred men?' said the man. 'They will eat and have some left over', said Jesus. And they did.

Struggling?

That's because all the stories are from the book of Kings (Pt 2) in the Old Testament, Chapter 4. And it's not Jesus who's mentioned, but a man called Elisha. But as I was reading these stories this morning, I couldn't help but notice some similarities. For example, it's just occurred to me that the two men had the same name – 'Elisha' and 'Yeshua' ('Jesus' is the Greek translation of that Hebrew name) both mean 'God saves'.

This is really interesting because it shows that God likes this way of working. We love the way Jesus lived, and so we want to be like him. But our lives don't seem to be crammed full of miracles like these. And so we can think, 'Maybe the miracle bits aren't for me, but just for Jesus. He is God, after all.' But here we are, hundreds of years before Jesus, to find God working in exactly the same way. Doesn't it make you wonder if he still wants to work this way? With you?

This way of working is wonderful. I see in the stories that God loves to do miracles in response to people's needs. I see that he loves to make a way for people with no hope. Which makes me think, 'I want to keep helping people with no hope'.

But here's what challenged me. Elisha helped all these people by doing something nonsensical suggested by God. It wasn't Elisha's good intentions or common sense that helped people, but God doing something impossible. My experience tells me that this is always going to be true. The drug addict, the gossip, the debtor, the snob: people do not change, however much they or we try to make it happen. They need a miracle. If we really want to help people, we need to ask God 'how?' Otherwise we'll just be wasting everybody's time.