Elijah and the Widow
v1 Enter Elijah
v4,6 If you have read or heard this many times before, please don't just pass over it because it is familiar. God commanded the ravens to provide for him. Sometimes we forget how willing God is to reach into our lives and make stuff happen. Stuff that isn't even possible normally.
v9 He commanded a widow to provide for him. Again, a simple statement on the surface, but when we actually meet this widow, it almost seems outrageous that the Lord would ask such a thing of her.
She is a widow. She has no husband, no job, and she's got a son to feed. She barely has enough flour and oil to make a last meal for herself and her son. A last meal! Before they die! And God wants her to take care of some guy off the street.
Imagine how she must have felt when He commanded her to take care of Elijah. It must have sounded like a death sentence.
v13 Elijah asks that she serve him first, on faith that God would provide.
v14 "So she went and did..." Why, with everything that I've been given, with all the excess in my life, do I still struggle with giving? I love to give, even take pride in giving to those who need it, but I've never given like this.
This woman was dirt poor. She was looking starvation in the face. Surely there was someone else, someone with an income who could feed this man! She couldn't put this man before her own son, could she? How could a widow be expected to feed someone outside her family? Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?
But when it came down to it, this widow obeyed. She went and did. She believed God.
v16 And God was faithful to her for it.
v17 But then something changed--another test for her faith.
Her son was so sick that he was not breathing. Whether he was moments from death or already dead is unclear to me, but that doesn't really matter. The point is, her faith was shaken by this. She turns to Elijah.
v18 Is it wrong to ask this question? I don't think so. God is bigger than our doubt and insecurity.
v20,21 I don't think Elijah knew the answer. I don't think he know how this would play out. He prays for a specific miracle.
v22-23 The Lord answers his prayer by bringing the boy back to life.
v24 The widow is reassured.
How do your feel about the widow after reading this? Did you find yourself looking down on her when her faith wavered? I admit that I did. I mean, all she has to do is look at her jars of flour and oil to know that God is watching out for her.
But her son has dying. Her reason for living. The only person she had left in the world. What will rock a person's faith like the death of a child? Nothing.
And then I looked objectively at her words and actions. She didn't lose her faith; she just wanted to understand. It seemed to her that Elijah's presence might have been connected, but she didn't throw him out. She didn't plot to kill him. She went to him and asked him to help her understand.
Sometimes faith doesn't look like we think it will. Sometimes faith isn't "everything will be okay." Because sometimes it won't be. And what does faith look like then?
The widow went to someone who knew the Lord and asked him for council. Sometimes faith is, "I don't know what's going to happen. It looks like something really bad. And I'm scared and freaked out and not at all calm and optimistic. But I trust God. I trust God, and I'll love him no matter what happens."
And that is the kind of faith that I think the widow had in her time of insecurity.
Faith is not the same thing as optimism. Faith is so much more powerful than that.
Next time: I Kings 18-19
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