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At the moment, I am enjoying going back through the Old Testament to find those little stories that I might have overlooked before. This is one of the stories I have found.
Nobody is healed, there is no fire from heaven, no dramatic confrontation with a king, no spectacular display of prophetic power. In fact, compared with some of the other stories surrounding Elisha, it is almost embarrassingly understated, which might explain why I have not noticed it before.
Someone turns up with some bread. Elisha tells his servant to give it to one hundred people. The servant looks at the food, looks at the crowd and asks the obvious question: how is that possibly going to be enough?
Then everybody eats, and when the meal is over, there is food left.
That is the whole story.
You may be thinking it sounds strangely familiar; if so, there is a very good reason.
But, before we rush forward several centuries to Jesus and a hillside crowded with thousands of hungry people, I think this little Elisha story deserves to be heard on its own terms. It appears near the end of 2 Kings 4, a chapter filled with situations where people reach the end of what they have.
