This is the widow of Zarephath.  An unnamed woman remembered for her loss- a widow, and her place – Zarephath, a village outside the boundaries of Israel, outside the territory ruled by Ahab and Jezebel.  It’s that second part of her story, her foreignness, that Jesus highlights to his listeners in Luke chapter 4.

The promise of God is not bound up in a location, a specific ruler, a denomination, a political party, or a nation. Rather it is an invitation to a future built on both righteousness and justice. A promise that love conquers death and that a better world is not only possible but that God can be found dwelling wherever and whenever we live into that promise.

Children or no children, it’s risky to want something out of life.  It’s a bold move to ask for a blessing.  Even bolder when you get a blessing to keep coming back to it year after year, knowing it has outgrown your previous efforts to care for it.  The blessing, now with a life of its own, calls for one’s own expansion.  More fabric to fit a larger frame.  More room within oneself to hold this ever-expanding prayer.

The glory and the beauty and the wonder of divine presence is all around them.  But they settle, like we all do at times, for something less alive, less real.  They make a golden calf, and believe, for a short time, it’s the best symbol of what’s important, what’s worthy of their energy and resources and devotion.  But fortunately for them, and for us, God, keeps offering the real thing, always ready for us to receive it, to accept this less shiny but far more glorious reality as the grandest gift of all.