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Total Surrender (1 Kings 17:13–16)
Read 1 Kings 17:13–16. What’s the first thing Elijah says to the wdow, and why? What great leap of faith is Elijah taking in asking her to do this?
Widows were marginal characters in the biblical world at the best of times. Especially if they had no grown children to take care of them, they were easily victimized and had limited legal recourse. A widow in the time of a great drought was even worse off. Each family was fighting for survival, and there would be no handouts to poor widows. This woman is now asked to feed the prophet. She is really the most unlikely candidate, when we consider her social and economic reality. Only a handful of flour and a little oil stands between this poor woman and starvation.
Whom does he tell her to feed first? What kind of thoughts must have gone through her mind when she heard that? What kind of faith was required on her part?
In many of our cultures, it is more appropriate to offer to others before taking for ourselves. However, to add insult to injury, the prophet not only wants to take from a person who cannot afford to give, but he wants to be served first.
Remember that, throughout this story, the prophet is really standing in as a representative of God before this woman. By asking her for her last bread, the prophet is inviting the woman to take a leap of faith, to surrender all that she has to him.
What other examples can you find in the Bible when the Lord asks for complete surrender? See, for instance, Genesis 22.
When we give God everything we have, we always gain in the end. The woman originally had enough for only one meal. In giving that meal to the prophet first, this pagan woman reached out in raw faith, trusting in what she could not see or understand. In a sense, isn’t that what faith is all about (see Heb. 11:1)—trusting in a God we can’t see and in promises we don’t fully understand? What’s amazing, too, is that this isn’t even an Israelite woman but a woman from a pagan land who practiced a degrading form of worship. And yet God somehow communicated with her (see vs. 9), and she responded in faith, doing what she had been commanded to, despite how foolish, from a worldly perspective, her actions might have seemed.
When was the last time you had to reach out in raw, naked faith, trusting in what you could not see or did not understand? What lessons did you learn about what it means for us, as fallen beings, to live by faith?
| TUESDAY | December 7 |
Read 1 Kings 17:13–16. What’s the first thing Elijah says to the wdow, and why? What great leap of faith is Elijah taking in asking her to do this?
Widows were marginal characters in the biblical world at the best of times. Especially if they had no grown children to take care of them, they were easily victimized and had limited legal recourse. A widow in the time of a great drought was even worse off. Each family was fighting for survival, and there would be no handouts to poor widows. This woman is now asked to feed the prophet. She is really the most unlikely candidate, when we consider her social and economic reality. Only a handful of flour and a little oil stands between this poor woman and starvation.
Whom does he tell her to feed first? What kind of thoughts must have gone through her mind when she heard that? What kind of faith was required on her part?
In many of our cultures, it is more appropriate to offer to others before taking for ourselves. However, to add insult to injury, the prophet not only wants to take from a person who cannot afford to give, but he wants to be served first.
Remember that, throughout this story, the prophet is really standing in as a representative of God before this woman. By asking her for her last bread, the prophet is inviting the woman to take a leap of faith, to surrender all that she has to him.
What other examples can you find in the Bible when the Lord asks for complete surrender? See, for instance, Genesis 22.
When we give God everything we have, we always gain in the end. The woman originally had enough for only one meal. In giving that meal to the prophet first, this pagan woman reached out in raw faith, trusting in what she could not see or understand. In a sense, isn’t that what faith is all about (see Heb. 11:1)—trusting in a God we can’t see and in promises we don’t fully understand? What’s amazing, too, is that this isn’t even an Israelite woman but a woman from a pagan land who practiced a degrading form of worship. And yet God somehow communicated with her (see vs. 9), and she responded in faith, doing what she had been commanded to, despite how foolish, from a worldly perspective, her actions might have seemed.
When was the last time you had to reach out in raw, naked faith, trusting in what you could not see or did not understand? What lessons did you learn about what it means for us, as fallen beings, to live by faith?
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