1 Kings 17-18; Proverbs 2:1-11

Thursday's Bible Reading: 1 Kings 17-18; Proverbs 2:1-11

I had my devotions today in the Conservatory at St. Marys Lacks Center after my second three-month checkup. It is a beautiful, tranquil setting—an excellent place to thank God for bringing me through this past year. Trust me, no amount of praise is enough. On my way up to the Conservatory I stopped on the fourth floor and visited two of my nurses who took care of me last year when I was in the hospital. I wrote about one of them in the June 10 ODB: Who Knows Best?

Now that I think about it, that question goes well with today's Bible reading. As I read about the widow of Zarephath and her encounter with the prophet Elijah, I wondered what caused her to obey God and give Elijah her last bit of food. In speaking to Elijah she referred to the Lord as "your God," so she had no reason to expect him to take care of her. But Elijah assured her that the God of Israel would save her and her son from starvation if she would feed Elijah. And so she did. And God rewarded her obedience by multiplying her resources. She trusted that God knew best. And she proved her trust by being obedient, even though it meant giving to a stranger all the resources she had to keep herself and her son alive.

Until today I hadn't paid much attention to the background of this story, but this is interesting. When God told Elijah to go to Zarephath, he said, "I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food" (1 Kings 17:9). God had gone ahead of Elijah. The widow didn't trust Elijah, she trusted God, even though she was not an Israelite. Although Scripture doesn't say why God chose this particular widow, it does say, though much later, why he chose someone outside of Israel. Jesus himself gave the explanation:

23Jesus said to them, "Surely you will quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.' "
24"I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon." —Luke 4:23-26

This is a sad reminder that God often has to use "outsiders" to accomplish his work. I wonder how often God is doing that today. I wonder how many times he's had to bypass me to get something done.