Article January 25, 1936 Issue

"A little cake first"

A. HERBERT PACKER

In that wonderful Bible story from the seventeenth chapter of I Kings, we read of the widow who, in a time of famine, was planning to prepare her last bit of food for herself and her son that they might "eat it, and die," as she said to Elijah, who then asked her to make him "a little cake first." It was a demand which common sense might well have disobeyed as impractical. And yet, through obedience to that divine command she realized supply for herself and her son as well as for the prophet.

Unless we are to doubt the possibility of such a thing at that time or this, we should seek the explanation of this demonstration in Christian Science. In this Science we learn that a drought, or famine, or any other condition or experience that limits our joy or threatens life, is not from the loving and infinitely good Father-Mother, God, but is due solely to a false sense of existence.

Elijah said to the woman, "Fear not," for he saw that the limited sense of God's goodness, which was expressing itself as drought, had terrified the woman so that she was looking forward to starvation. Therefore, his task in realizing supply for them both was to quiet that fear. With fear destroyed, the woman was willing to obey the prophet and rely on his promise that God would continue to maintain her supply. And with this reliance came an abundant evidence of God's goodness which met their need. The Bible record says that "she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah."

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