When the Brook Dried Up

The water was gone. Not just gone...bare, bones dry. In fact, if he knelt down, he could touch the cracks in the old brook bed. Why? He had obeyed...he had been faithful. In fact, he had not hesitated. The Lord had said, "Go hide" and he had gone...no questions asked. So, he had done the right thing. Why was the water gone? Then, the Lord came again. Only these instructions made less sense than the first, and still he obeyed. God said, "Go to Zarephath." And what awaited him there? Just a widow and her son...who were worse off than he was, if that was possible. But, again, he did not fuss or fume or even question. The record shows he simply walked the long road to Zarephath and found the widow. If he felt down and out, this woman was in a worse position...preparing literally her last meal. Imagine that image that he stumbled upon. Doubtless this woman had cried tears until there were no tears left...but the raw emotion was still there in the absense of the tears. Her son (as far as I can tell her only living relative?) was getting ready to eat his final meal and then begin the horrible process of slowly starving and thirsting to death. "Oh Lord, this will not be easy," the dusty prophet must have thought to himself. Nevertheless, he approached the woman with the authority that only comes from ABOVE and requested some water. A steep request in a severe drought such as this...but she began to walk away. Then, he called after her..."Oh yes, and a little bit of food if you have it." That's when the mama bear in her came out. "As your God lives," she cried in outrage..."I only have a little bit of flour and oil left to my name." And here comes the awesome power of God once again. The prophet tells her to make it anyways and bring it to him. "God will not let those provisions run out," he explains and she believes him and she does it. Faith and trust are under construction at the brooks and widows houses of our own lives. We may not like it...we may not understand it...but neither (probably) did this prophet at the time that it was happening to him. Talk about trust. This man trusted God in his most basic human need...food and water. And God brought it to him. Now, the Bible does not go into major detail but I imagine he must have been at the brook for a while because it would have taken at least a couple days for the brook to dry up. I KNOW in my heart of hearts that there must have been at least a moment or two where Elijah said to himself, "Did I mishear what the Lord asked of me?" "Am I doing something wrong?" "Why had HE not given me my next directive?" And then, when God does tell this prophet to move on...where does he end up? In a worse (humanly speaking) situation than before in some ways. Now, he finds himself dependent on a widow, who in Bible times had a rough time just providing for herself. I know if I had been him I might have just died of fear just thinking of asking this lady for the food that was in short supply. But, you know what I am holding out for? The ending. You see, if you keep reading the account, the climax of this story is coming out...God is about to use this ONE guy to bring ultimate glory to HIMSELF!!! The people of Israel had pretty much thrown the One TRUE God out the window and had been worshiping Baal (who was a pretty nasty dude to worship, come to find out). God was gonna use this dusty, thirsty brook-dwelling, raven-fed prophet to show a whole mountain side full of people the POWER and AWESOME wonder of God. Right now, I am sitting at the dried up brook and I am asking, "Why?" "I thought I was doing what you told me?" "I thought this was the road I was supposed to take"....and it very well might have been. I am walking from dried up brook to a widow's house and thinking..."How did this happen?" I know when the doctor first told me that Hannah had died, I thought, "Here we go again, hopes dashes, dreams crushed...how am I gonna do this?" But I do not know the final chapter...I do not see, YET, how God will be glorified, but I am going to trust that He will be. Just like the prophet sitting at his brook...I did not know what the next chapter will be. But, I can tell you one thing...if I even get to have 1/100th of an ending like Elijah the prophet....then my brook experience will be worth it all.