With both Elijah and Elisha as well as confrontations with kings there were encounters with "ordinary" people. We see the same in Jesus' ministry, where He met both normal people, nobodies, and leaders of various sorts. God is the God of all creation and He shows no favouritism.
A woman of a prophet came to Elisha because her husband had died and she was in danger of losing her two sons. The sons would have been sold into slavery to pay the debt.
Elisha's initial response is "what do you have". We often look at our problems and circumstances with despair. The solution will often be to use what we have, the difference is that we will use what we have together with God. When God gets involved everything changes.
So the woman collected all the jars and they continually poured oil into the jars until all the jars were used up, she could then sell the oil for money.
God has a special concern for the poor, but He doesn't just look after the poor. The Shunammite woman was well off and Elisha stopped there. The woman and her husband decided to make a "spare room" for him. Elisha wanted to repay her in some way. The woman was perhaps to proud to admit her real need, a trait many of us have. Elisha asked his servant and learnt that she had no son. She would consider this something of a mark of disgrace. So Elisha prophesied over her that she would have a son. The woman objected, probably not wanting to be hurt. There are two lessons to learn here. First, we may have suffered much, been disappointed so many times, that we are afraid to ask God, fearing we will just be disappointed again. Secondly, we must be most careful in giving words and promises to people. They may be given with the best of intentions, but if it isn't really God we risk hurting people.
So the woman became pregnant and had a son. However, a few years later the boy became seriously ill. The woman went off to find Elisha. She feared that all her fears were indeed coming true, that the end result was that she would be disappointed and deeply hurt. Elisha went with the woman and healed the boy, in fact brought him back to life.
On another occasion a pot of stew had become poisoned because of the carelessness of one of the men. Elisha resolved the problem by adding some flour. Sometimes we think God will only help us if we "deserve it", but this is not so. Sometimes He even makes allowances for our foolishness.
Finally Elisha fed one hundred men with twenty loaves. This rather pales in comparison with Jesus feeding the five thousand, highlighting the greatness of Jesus' miracle.
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