Now,
Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you, but to fear the Lord your
God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and
His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good? Deuteronomy 10:12-13
This week we have been talking about trust and how the wicked King Ahab
trusted in the wrong people and the wrong things. God sent the prophet Elijah with a message
for Ahab that most likely upset him. So
God had Elijah leave the area and hide out for a while.
God has Elijah hide near the
brook Kerith down by the Jordan River and that’s where he lives for the next
couple of years. And while he was hiding
there: “The
ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the
evening, and he drank from the brook.” 1 Kings 17:6
Elijah was hiding. He could not go out and forage for food or go
hunting. He had to stay close to the
hideout. So God had Ravens deliver
take-out to him twice a day. He drank water
from the brook.
Why would God use Ravens to
supply Elijah with food when there are so many other simple and satisfying ways
of getting the job done? He is God – He
could do anything!
Now this is odd for several reasons:
- Ravens
don’t generally like being around humans… they avoid us if at all
possible.
- Ravens
were unclean birds. God’s people were not allowed to eat them, nor offer
them in sacrifice.
- The
food of ravens has usually been dead for a while. They eat road kill. They
were scavengers. They’re kind of like vultures. Who would want to share
their food?
- Even
if we wanted to share their food, Ravens would never share. They don’t
even share their food with their babies.
So God has Elijah being fed by
unclean, disgusting, anti-social, and notoriously cruel birds. WHY? Why
Ravens?
Elijah, a prophet of God, has to depend on some dirty, stinky birds to
bring him his food twice a day. You have
to wonder if there might have been times when he was fearful of whether or not
they would come back. God used this time in Elijah’s life to strengthen his
trust in Him. Elijah had to completely
depend on God for every provision of his life.
He had his food delivered – not ahead of time – but only when it was
time to eat. There was no stocking
up. It was on an as needed basis.
Eventually the brook dried up and God told Elijah to move on. He told Elijah to go to Zarephath to a widow
and ask for help. The widow was very
poor with not enough food to share. She
was preparing her final meal for her and her son and Elijah had to ask her to
share it with him because that is what God told him to do, with a promise. God had said that her flour would not run out
nor would her jug of oil run dry. The widow did as Elijah had asked and just as
he had said, her jar of flour and her jug of oil did not run out. Elijah learned that he could trust God. God
had ordered birds to feed him and he never went hungry. He showed Elijah that He could enable a
destitute widow to meet his needs. God
knows that trust is earned and over and over again God trained Elijah in
trust. God knows the power of trust in
our lives. There may be unexplained
ravens and dried up brooks in your life.
Pray and trust that God will use every moment of wavering faith in our
lives to build our trust in Him.
Scripture to Claim:
Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes
to him must believe that he exists AND that he rewards those who earnestly seek
him.” Hebrews 11:6