For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’ 1 Kings 17:14 ESV
Today’s reading brought me to some of my very favorite stories in Scripture. I’m in the book of Kings and found myself in the Elijah stories this morning.
Elijah is one of those characters that I find very relatable.
Elijah loves the Lord. He is actively serving the Lord, and Elijah has a very special relationship with the God of the universe! God speaks to Elijah regularly.
And yet, in spite of the closeness Elijah has with God, he seems to grow discouraged easily and often. It seems that in spite of all the miracles he has witnessed and been a part of, Elijah sometimes struggles with doubt.
But that’s not the part of the story that’s got me thinking today.
Today I’m thinking about the widow at Zarephath. I’m not thinking so much about how hard it must have been for her to serve Elijah the bread she made with what she believed to be her last bit of oil and flour. And it’s not that time when her son died and Elijah had to ask the Lord to heal the boy.
All of these incidents are amazing and have important lessons for us, certainly.
But today I’m thinking about “the day after.”
The next day. The day the rain came and the drought was over.
How did that work?
For the better part of three years, the Lord had been miraculously multiplying the widow’s oil and flour so that she, and her son, and Elijah, and apparently some other folks who were staying with her, all were able to eat in spite of drought and famine. Then one day God tells Elijah that it’s time to go back, and he leaves Zarephath. The famine is not quite over yet, though it will be soon. The widow and her son still need to survive.
I can imagine that this lady must have had a little anxiety about Elijah’s leaving. His presence served as a visual reminder of God’s provision for her in her time of need. I don’t know if she had any understanding of the omnipresent nature of God. She may have feared that the Lord would leave with Elijah.
But God didn’t leave her.
The Bible doesn’t tell us anything more about this lady after Elijah’s departure. But what Elijah told the widow when he met her tells us what we need to know - her supplies would not run out until God sent the rain.
So what I’m wondering about today is that next day - the day after the rain. For the past few years, all this lady had to do was go to her kitchen and find exactly what she needed for the day. It was her family’s “manna.” But now the drought is over, the rains have come, and we can ascertain that this is when her supplies must have finally run dry.
Maybe this was a scary day for her. There’s comfort in the familiar. For hundreds of days now, she’s had a routine. She’s developed habits, and those habits have been working. She and her household have survived many days during which, we can speculate, not everyone had it so well. But there had been a certainty and a sense of safety for this widow though. And now that was changing.
Maybe it was an exciting day for her son. For the past three years his mom had fixed the exact same thing every day. He probably had grown tired of the same-old-same-old long ago. Now that the oil and flour were used up, it was time for something new.
Whatever the emotions, and probably they ran the gamut, change was coming.
They had learned to trust in the provision. Now it was time to trust in the Provider.
They had seen God through the eyes of Elijah. He was their “visual aid,” a bodily-present representation of the Lord. Now it was time to see God with their own eyes,
Charles Dickens might have said, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…” Learning to trust God for yourself - growing your faith - it’s wonderful. And it’s hard.
As I was walking Bailey this morning, I was meditating on this story, wondering how I might bring this post to its conclusion and considering its application. And I was trying to figure out why this aspect of the story matters so much to me today, And then I realized…
This is a “Zarephath moment” for me. I’m in a drought, in a manner of speaking. It’s layoff season from my job. We’re coming to the end of one month and the beginning of the next. That’s when most of the bills come due. And from where I stand, it looks like the oil and flour jars are just about empty. For most of my life, this situation has brought me to deep anxiety and worry. Oddly, today I’m feeling less worry and more anticipation.
Here’s what I know: if the oil’s running out, the drought must be coming to an end. The end of the drought doesn’t mean that the Lord is going to stop providing. He’s just setting the stage to provide differently.
And I am so curious as to what that is going to look like!
So that is my encouragement to you today - it’s time to get our focus off of the provision and onto the Provider.
Maybe, like me, you seem to be left with a lot of month at the end of the money.
Or maybe it’s a relational situation for you. Perhaps you’re feeling that you’ve tried everything you know to do to bring restoration to that relationship. Now it’s time to trust God to do what you cannot do on your own.
Zarephath is a faith walk. It’s seasons of learning to trust what you know more than what you see - that the nearly empty jars are going to be enough because God is keeping them from running dry. And then Zarepheth is the next season of learning to trust that God still provides, even after the jars run dry. He just may do it differently today than He did yesterday.
If the oil is running out, the drought must be coming to an end.
This is cause for excitement!
Celebrate!
And keep watch for something exciting in the coming new season!
Trust the Provider one more time.
…Just a thought…
No comments:
Post a Comment