The Flour and the Oil
A starving widow gave Eliyahu her last handful of flour first, and her jar did not run empty until the rain returned.
The drought had gone on a long time when Hashem sent Eliyahu to Tzarfas, a town of Tzidon. At the gate he found a widow gathering sticks. He asked her for a little water, and as she turned to bring it, he called after her: please bring me a piece of bread as well. She told him the plain truth. She had only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug, and she was gathering two sticks to bake one last meal for herself and her son. After that, she said, they would die.
Do not be afraid, Eliyahu told her. Make me a small cake first, and afterward make for yourself and your son, for Hashem has said that the flour will not run out and the oil will not fail until the day He sends rain on the land. She did as he said, and day after day there was food for her, for him and for her household.
Later her son fell ill until no breath was left in him. In her grief she cried that the man of God had come to bring her sins to mind. Eliyahu carried the boy to the upper room, laid him on his own bed, stretched himself over him three times and cried out to Hashem, and the child's soul returned to him. Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer teaches that the boy was Yonah, the future prophet, and that it was through the power of tzedakah, the kindness with which she took him in, that he lived again, just as the dead will one day be revived.
Source: Melachim I 17:8–24; Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 33; Gemara, Sanhedrin 113a (Talmud Bavli). English: The JPS Tanakh (Gender-Sensitive Edition); Pirke de Rebbi Eliezer, trans. Gerald Friedlander (London, 1916).
The widow of Tzarfas did not give from plenty. She gave first, from the little she had, and that was what never ran out. This week, when you feel you have nothing to spare, whether money, time or patience, set aside a small first portion anyway. Put a coin in the pushka before you shop, or give the first ten minutes of a busy evening to a child or a lonely friend. Notice how the rest of the day holds up.