In Luke 4:25-27 Jesus said,
“Certainly there were many needy widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the heavens were closed for three and a half years, and a severe famine devastated the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a foreigner—a widow of Zarephath in the land of Sidon. And many in Israel had leprosy in the time of the prophet Elisha, but the only one healed was Naaman, a Syrian.”
In context, Jesus is talking about how a prophet in not accepted in his own home town, in which he is giving this talk. But I was thinking about how Elijah was sent to one widow, even though many people were suffering. Elijah called a drought on the land and that drought inhibited people from being able to grow food. When Elijah was sent to that woman she was getting sticks for a fire to make a small batch of bread with the last of her ingredients so her and her son could eat and then die. She had no hope for food beyond the last little bit she had. Yet for that widow and her son that last little bit she had did not run out.
Maybe you can’t help everyone, but you can help someone. Maybe you can’t be everywhere, but you can be somewhere. Maybe you can’t do everything, but you can do something. I don’t mean this in a restrictive or limited way, I mean it more as a honed focus. Jesus said to Martha in Luke 10:41-42,
“you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
There probably are not a lot of things that make you hot and bothered (in a righteous kind of way), but maybe a few, maybe one. Maybe an injustice or a place where there is a lack of wholeness and healing, maybe the poor and down cast, the abused and the overlooked. That’s your widow, that’s your leper. That’s the person about to perish until you show up. Hone that focus and make some moves. There are people who will have no relief until you and I bring it. It was Jesus who said, “YOU are the light of the world.”