To Young Believers.
Read 1 Kings 17.
THIS poor woman in the picture has just come out of the city gate to gather a few sticks to make her last fire, as she thinks. Her husband has died, and she with her little boy have been living together, but for a long time there has been no rain to water the earth, making it to bring forth and bud, to give “seed to the sower and bread to the eater,” and the food of this poor woman has run so short that they are preparing to die together. A handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse is all they have left: about “two sticks” will make fire enough to bake it into a cake, and the mother has come out to pick them up. Yet she is the person whom God has appointed to “sustain” His servant Elijah for at least “a full year!” (vs. 15, margin). One would have thought she needed to be sustained instead of taking in a guest and sustaining him; and such indeed is the fact. She has hardly anything left to live upon herself, only the very little she is about to eat and die upon she is willing to share with the man of God. Now, God sees and values “the willing mind” (2 Cor. 8:1212For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not. (2 Corinthians 8:12)), and accepts “the will for the deed,” where the will is real.
So here He graciously reckons that the widow sustained the prophet, although in fact it was only through his being there that she was sustained herself. She received him into her house, and the effect was that she and her son were saved from dying of hunger; and even when, a year after, he did die, and his mother clasped his dead body to her bosom, she found that the One of whom she had said, “The Lord thy God liveth,” still lived, and would, by His servant, bring back the life of her little boy, that he might live too.
That blessed God, who had condescended to be “the Lord God of Elijah,” enabled His servant not only to provide food for the living, thus keeping them alive, but to bring back life to one who was dead! What a happy thing to belong to such a God, and to know that He is ours! And He is now to be known even in a still more blessed way; not as the One who only sustains in life, or brings back to life the widow’s son, but as One who has given up to death His own Son! Would the poor widow rejoice to have again her child? How much more should you and I love and try to please our heavenly Father, “who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all;” has now raised Him from the dead, and given Him to be our Saviour and Lord, and will “with Him also freely give us all things”! (Rom. 8:3232He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32).) And see how simple and happy the faith of Elijah was in this chapter. Judgment had come upon the guilty people for their sins, and he had to feel with the rest that it was now a “dry and thirsty land, without water.” But he speaks of “the Lord God of Israel, before whom I stand;” and God does not forget or fail to provide for those who stand for and trust in Him in the midst of this guilty and barren world. He has, however, to learn for himself that each day’s food does come only from God. Hiding away, at the word of the Lord, in lonely solitude, by a brook drying up before his eyes, he waits on God, who hears the ravens when they cry, and can so fill them, even in a time of “great famine” (Luke 4:2525But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; (Luke 4:25)), that those hungry birds, who not uncommonly forget to feed their own young, shall have enough and to spare, and take him bread and flesh twice a day! Not a day’s supply beforehand, but food in the morning for his hunger, and again in the evening. How truly and constantly he must have felt his dependence upon his God for each next meal! And then the brook drying up at his feet, and no word yet from the Lord as to any more rain, or where he should go next, until (it would appear) the brook he had been drinking of was quite dried up! And then to be sent a long way off, quite out of the land of Israel, to a “widow woman” he had never seen, to be sustained. He found her at the gate of Zarephath, as you see her in the picture, and heard how very poor she was, yet made no question-about her being the one to whom the Lord was sending him. Had he really expected to be dependent upon his hostess, he would have sought for some wealthy widow who could afford to sustain him. But no, it was “the Lord God before whom I stand” who had the confidence of his heart; and if it should turn out that both he and the widow and her house were still simply dependent on God for each meal, it would be only so much the better; they would realize all the more fully and simply that it was God who was feeding them from day to day. And so it was; we read nothing of the handful becoming a barrelful, but each day the oil and meal were fed on, and they did not “waste.” And so the ravens, who forget to feed their young, are made to remember and feed the servant of God; and then the poor widowed mother, who had nothing to feed her son with, except part of one cake before he died, is enabled to sustain the prophet “a full year,” and live herself upon the little that was increased through her sharing it with him.
Dear young fellow disciple, let us ponder this interesting narrative, and ask the Lord to remind us of our own constant dependence upon Himself, not only for “daily bread,” but everything we need. Surely it is a world of dried-up brooks, and all blessing to our souls, as well as sustenance for our bodies, must come from the Lord who loves ‘us and cares for us. May we learn also from the poor widow of Zarephath, that, however little we have or can do, it is the Lord’s to “command” as to the use of it; and if we are enabled to devote it to Him, and share it with those He sends, our own, blessing will be multiplied thereby, and His great name be honored too.
W. T.