1 Kings 17:8-16
The Widow of Zarephath
Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’ So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.’ As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.’
But she said, ‘As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.’
Elijah said to her, ‘Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.’
She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.
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I'd like for you
to think about bread for a moment. How many of you have made bread
by hand at some point in your life? How many of you still do? When
making bread by hand, there's a very important step in this
process—you have to let it rise. You need to give the yeast time
to work—otherwise your bread won't be light and fluffy. The entire
loaf will be two inches tall and it will be as dense as a hockey
puck. There isn't enough butter in the world to make good toast out
of such a loaf. Just trust me on this one.
So you put the
bowl with the dough in it someplace, drape a towel across it, and
then come back a few hours later. Suddenly, your small ball of dough
has become this huge ball of dough. In your absence, it has
multiplied, as though it were waiting for you to turn your back and
then suddenly start growing. This is what yeast does. We expect for
this to happen—in fact, we're disappointed if it doesn't.
But do you ever
remember a time in your life when this was something wonderful, when
this was an amazing thing that happens—you put dough in a bowl, mix
in little tiny grains, and then end up with a lot more dough than
you started with? When we stop and think about it, isn't that
extraordinary that it happens at all?
Know what's even
more incredible?
Bread machines. I
remember when my mom got a bread machine—it was amazing. You
didn't have to do anything other than throw the ingredients in the
pan, push the start button and then come back four hours later.
Fresh, hot perfect loaves of bread, every time. Incredible.
But pretty soon,
it was just habit. It was expected. It ceased to be amazing. We
have a bread machine now. The only time I stop to think about the
mysteriousness of the process is when it doesn't work properly. I
don't give the machine a second thought. It simply does its job, and
the magic is gone. For all I know, the Keebler elves have given up
hope of my noticing their presence in my kitchen. It's ordinary.
After all, it's just bread. Nothing special.
It is in our
nature to lose our ability to wonder at the miracles of life when
they happen day after day. Perhaps it would all be too overwhelming
if we were captured by each and every miracle that unfolded around
us. Can you imagine what life would be like if you spent time in awe
each morning that God granted you another day? Or if you stared out
the window at the sunrise, unsure if you've ever seen something so
extraordinary, so magical, in your life? What would life be like if
we heralded every flower, every tree, every person that we
encountered as the absolute miracle of life that they are? We'd get
some strange looks, but I don't know if it would be sustainable. To
a certain extent, we have to become accustomed to these extraordinary
things that occur around us. They have to become ordinary so that we
can function as normal people, rather than spending our days staring
in awe at some flower that is in bloom in the backyard.
But I can't help
but wonder at what point that widow stopped being in wonder at the
fact that her jar of meal never ran out. I can't help but wonder if
that jug of oil that always had enough was a source of constant awe
in her life.
Think of her
situation—it is one of the most pitiable situations in the Bible.
Elijah has been out in the wilderness getting fed by God through the
ravens. It's odd and not enviable, but it beats starving to death,
right? From there, he travels to Zaarephath, which to us is just
another unpronouncable word in the Bible, but to Elijah is the heart
of pagan country, the seat of the worship of Baal, the false god whom
the worship of started this whole mess. God is sending Elijah into
the heart of enemy territory to do something extraordinary.
So Elijah sees
this widow and asks her for something to eat. She replies that she
is gathering sticks so that she and her son may eat the last of her
food, lay down and die. This woman has absolutely no hope. This is
the face of despair—a woman who has no hope and has no pretense of
finding any. She's not expecting a deliverer—she isn't expecting a
Savior. She isn't expecting anything other than a painful death for
her and her beloved son. As a father, I cannot imagine anything more
painful than knowing that I cannot provide enough food to keep my son
alive. I would be despondent, and then I would fight. This woman
probably fought for a time, but that fight is gone. There is no
fight left in her, not for herself, not for her son. So she is going
to lay down and die.
But first, Elijah
asks her to feed him. She has enough food for one last meal, and
Elijah asks her to give a little up.
There's a message
in here about faith not being easy, about us having to give something
up. If all that our faith ever does is add things to our lives, we
need to examine our faith, because God always asks for something from
us, to give something up to make room for the blessings he wants to
give us. This woman has to give up quite a bit of what little she
has.
But this woman,
living in the heart of a place that worshiped Baal, stepped out in
faith that Elijah's God could provide.
Sure enough, it
says, that jar was not emptied, and there was always oil in that jug,
just as Elijah had said.
At what point, I
want to know, did the sensation of peeking in the jar and finding
still more grow old for this woman? When did she tire of finding out
that there was still more, that Elijah's God had still more grace,
still more love to give, for this widow, who would have been
forgotten by the rest of society? At what point did it cease to
become novel that God loved her enough to sustain her through this
trial of her life?
I don't know what
the answer to that question is, but we each need to examine our own
lives to make sure that we are sustaining a sense of worship, a sense
of awe, at what the almighty God is doing in our lives. Each and
every morning, you wake up because God has chosen to give us the gift
of another day, to sustain us by his hand. It's all a gift.
And God doesn't
just do enough to keep us alive—no, God pours out grace upon us,
grace upon grace. He covers our lives with his love, but we're often
so busy, so caught up in the everyday, that we fail to see, to
recognize his love. But he still pours it out.
Today, we gather
around the communion table. It's just ordinary bread, ordinary grape
juice, but through the grace of God it is transformed into a powerful
reminder, a sacrament, of God's love and provision for us. God uses
these ordinary things to communicate something extraordinary—that
he loves us enough to sustain us, to feed us, to nourish us that we
might grow into the people of faith he longs for us to be. Jesus
left the church with this symbolic meal so that we might be
constantly reminded of how God takes the ordinary, the routine, and
does the miraculous through it. Every time we sit and eat a meal, be
it breakfast alone or a Thanksgiving feast, we should be reminded of
God's provision for us, of how God loves us, of how God can use the
ordinary and do something extraordinary. We lose our sense of
wonder, but we need to hold onto it.
Because God has
done something extraordinary for all of us. We gather around this
meal to remember that God sent his Son, his only Son, to die for us
on the cross. And in so doing, he has claimed us back from the pit
of death, from the despair of our own hopelessness, and he has given
us eternal life. We aren't called to lead ordinary lives—we are
transformed into extraordinary individuals, called by name by the God
of the universe, claimed by his love through the power of the cross
so that we might live forever as his children. God delights in us
because the power of his love has transformed us. We do not lead
ordinary lives—but as disciples of the living God, we are
extraordinary, and we need to remember that. We need to remember to
be caught up in the awesome grace of God, to let ourselves be soaked
in his grace, to worship in all that we do. We need to marvel at how
wonderful God is, at the amazing fact that he has saved us, sinners
all, from death. We need to not lose our sense of worship, to get
accustomed to coming to church, to growing used to the talk of
resurrection and salvation, words we've heard many times. Each time
we should get caught up in the wondrous victory of life over death,
of hope over despair, all of it made possible by one extraordinary
man—Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, our hope.
Let us pray
