A WOMAN ON THE VERGE of starvation is making a small loaf of bread for herself and her son, with her final rations of flour and cooking oil. When a stranger, the prophet Elijah, stops and asks her to give him the first bites, she does so. As a result, the three of them have enough food to live in security throughout a major drought.

Another woman, just widowed, is deeply in debt, and her sons are about to lose their freedom to their father's creditors. When Elijah's successor, Elisha, asks her to value her only meager possession—a small pot of oil—she finds that oil multiplying itself miraculously, providing her with a self-sustaining income that saves the family from financial ruin.

A third woman is an outcast who bears the signs of public condemnation. Audaciously, she approaches Jesus in the middle of a ceremonial gathering and anoints his feet with very expensive, fragrant oil. Through the love and transforming influence of the Christ, she finds herself absolved of guilt and encouraged to pursue a life of dignity.

In each of these three examples from the Bible, the symbolic role that oil played serves as an illustration for how the spiritual activist can prayerfully approach today's concerns revolving around the commodity known as crude oil.

Our modern-day concerns aren't really all that far removed from the ones those women in the Bible faced. For example, as the winter approaches, rising oil prices resulting from a variety of factors are causing many people, particularly those in cold climates, to contemplate the disturbing choice between heating and eating (scarcity leading to concerns about security). And one chief cause for this price spike is seen to be the US housing slump, which has resulted from irresponsible sub-prime lending (credit troubles, not unlike those that faced the widowed woman). Also, some critics blame the industrialized West, and the US in particular, for the disproportionate consumption of fossil fuel that they see as unfair, if not immoral (condemnation over human behavior).

In all this, the Bible is more than just a nice book. It offers healing insight. Sentinel founder Mary Baker Eddy noted, "In Christian Science we learn that the substitution of the spiritual for the material definition of a Scriptural word often elucidates the meaning of the inspired writer" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 579). And along these lines, she provided a metaphysical interpretation of oil as "consecration; charity; gentleness; prayer; heavenly inspiration" (p. 592).

In its spiritual significance, then, oil is comprised of spiritual qualities rather than of physical properties. Because they have their source in God, these spiritual qualities are infinite and can be perceived mentally. As we consider the significance of these qualities—and especially as we endeavor to express them in our own daily actions—we can expect to see them take shape in our lives and others' lives, through healing and improvement of the human condition.

Oil is of vital strategic and economic importance throughout the world. Economies wax and wane because of it. War and peace sometimes hang in its balance. The well-being of individual families is directly affected by its cost and availability. And the general consensus is that we're helpless to do anything about the fact that this commodity appears to be growing inexorably scarcer, or that it threatens to harm the environment through our overdependence on it.

But the Biblical definition of oil offers only healing, and not divisiveness. It speaks of something that can only multiply for our benefit, and never doom us through its depletion or its hazardous effects. Spiritually speaking, oil is a blessing—one we can and must avail ourselves of every day.

We can learn a lot from those women from the Bible. Consider the first one, the widow of Zarephath. At Elijah's prompting, she counteracted the specter of starvation with the oil of charity. The second woman was willing to employ the oil of prayer and heavenly inspiration right in the face of bankruptcy and ruin. And bereft as she was of love or hope, the third woman was willing to use the oil of consecration and gentleness. The spiritual qualities of oil were there, within these people all the time, at hand to produce good effects on the human scene. God put them there.

And these spiritual qualities are within each of us, too. God has put them in the hearts of every one of His sons and daughters, throughout all time, because He has made us to be the image of His goodness and love. These qualities—this oil—are mighty. They furnish us with the power to really "do something" about today's oil crisis. And there's no time like the present to start thinking about them. Expressing them. Living them. Who can measure such reserves?

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