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Keep your prayer vessel full for the Gulf
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
There’s a story in the Bible of a widow who has prepared herself to die. Her situation is dire, but at the last moment, the prophet Elisha turns up at her door. He gives her what at first seems like odd advice—to gather vessels and pour the little bit of oil she has into these vessels so that she can sell the supply. She follows his counsel and finds that her supply of oil then becomes bottomless (see II Kings 4:1-7).
A current bottomless source of oil is the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. But unlike in the case of the widow, this reserve is clearly not serving as a blessing!
The world is watching, horrified, as the rig continues to gush oil from its source, 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, spreading upwards of 2,500 miles in diameter. The scale of the spill could well exceed the damage wrought by the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska’s waters.
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About the author
Piper Foster is the director of the Sopris Foundation, based in Aspen, CO, and is on sabbatical on a German Chancellor Fellowship in Berlin, researching environmental policy and energy.
