ALMOST all of us, at some time, seem to be confronted with the question of supply in one form or another. Not many of us reach the desperate point of the widow of Zarephath, who said to Elijah that she was preparing to cook her last bit of food for herself and her son, "that we may eat it, and die" (I Kings 17: 12). But often we do wonder just how we are going to meet our legitimate financial obligations, or we despair of gaining a sense of abundant good in some other direction.
It was through Elijah that the angel message which broke the mesmerism of lack came to the widow. Her thought had obviously become so filled with limitation that she was thinking of the little bit of meal and oil in her house as her only supply. She did not realize that she had all of God's tender love and care around her and that His angel thoughts were there, waiting to be taken into consciousness. She was so submerged in despair and lack that she apparently even forgot her normal inclination to think of a stranger's needs.
When Elijah said to her (verse 13), "Fear not; . . . make me ... a little cake first," he was being not selfish but wise in turning her thought to unselfishness and a more spiritual concept of supply and away from herself and her problem. When, through receptivity of God, divine Love, she did make the cake for Elijah, her supply was immediately manifested in a way which took care of her human need. Making "a little cake" seems to symbolize the thing we most need to do in order to open the door of our consciousness to a sense of God's abundant good.
