The God Who Acts

1 Kings 17:17-24

Many of us are interested in learning about people. We like to know what other people do, what they own and wear, where they go, and how they live. Like the ad for a tabloid used to say, ”Inquiring minds want to know.”

The story in 1 Kings 17 is about a widow, her son, and the prophet Elijah. It is an interesting story. Part of the story is found in the reading for today. The basic plot of this part of the story is that the widow’s son is ill and Elijah heals him. In the earlier part of the story, God use Elijah to provide an unending source of meal and oil for this widow and her son. Those are the two things that happen in the story, but there are several questions about this widow that are left unanswered.

We might like to know more about this woman. For example, how old was she and her son? Was she a teenager, twenty-something, or maybe thirty-something? The story says that Elijah took the son from her and took him upstairs, so the son was young enough, or at least small enough, to be held and carried by both his mother and Elijah. We don’t know how old either the mother or the son was, but chances are, they were relatively young.

Another unanswered question is why didn’t someone help this poor woman? Where was her family? Where was her deceased husband’s family? We can only speculate on an answer. Perhaps they lived too far away. Maybe they were also poor. Or, there may have been a rift in one or both families. We don’t know. We do know that they lived in a male-oriented society and women who were alone were usually on their own.

Another question is why couldn’t this woman support herself? Did she have a garden? Did she try to get a job? Was she in poor health, unskilled, or lazy? We don’t know. We do know that there was no welfare, daycare, or social security in those days. And women did not have the opportunities to work that women do today.

The bottom line is that we don’t know why this woman was in the shape she was in. But then, that is not a question that Elijah asks, or that he tries to answer. These are the facts that we do know from this story: 1) the woman and her son were in need, and 2) God, through Elijah, met the needs of both her and her son.

The first and most obvious need of this woman was that she needed food for herself and her son. “I have only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a cruse; and now I am gathering a couple of sticks, that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” These are the words of a desperate woman who has lost hope. And then Elijah makes an unusual request. He says that if she will make a cake for him, that the meal would never run out and that the oil would never be used up. The story doesn’t tell us why, but the widow responds to Elijah’s request. She makes a cake for him, and what Elijah had promised happens. The meal and the oil never run out. They always have food.

The second need of this woman is that she needs help for her son. He was so ill that he was barely breathing. We don’t know exactly what is wrong with the boy. But it appears that he became ill suddenly and that his mother seemed to think that Elijah may somehow be responsible for her son’s problem. We do know that he was ill and needed help. And the story tells us that Elijah took the boy in his arms, prayed for him, and the boy was healed.

There are two lottery stories that I heard about a few years ago at the same time I was reading this story about the widow and her son. During the same week there were two families that won state lotteries. One was in New York. A Vietnamese family had relocated to the United States and was being sponsored by a United Methodist Church. They were barely getting by when they won millions in the New York state lottery. The other family was in Roanoke County, Virginia. The family was active in the Church of God of Prophecy. Apparently the church needed a new organ, and the lady of the house bought two lottery tickets and said that if she won she would give the winnings to the church. One of her tickets was a winner, and she gave the $20,000 that she had won to the Organ Fund of the church. Sometimes the best we can say is that God works in mysterious ways. In these two lottery stories, the needs of a family and a church were met in very unusual ways.

The main message of this story of the widow and her son is that God knows what we need and is able and willing to provide exactly what we need. We are also reminded that often God uses other people, like Elijah, to help us. We are never alone, but God is always watching over us. And God may also use us, as He used Elijah, to help other people.

Sometimes we can get caught up in questions and attempts to find answers that don’t really matter. Our questions may be a way that we try to gain control of a situation. We want to be able to explain everything and, often, the more we know, the more secure we feel. But life isn’t always that way. There are many things that we will never fully know or understand, and many things that are beyond our control. The best we can do is to have faith in God, who is at work in all of the events of life, both good and bad.

In his letter to the church in Rome, the Apostle Paul writes these words, “God causes everything to work together for good for those that love God.” I have to remind myself that Paul didn’t write that everything that happens to us is good, but that God uses everything for good. We can obviously see the good that happens when Elijah visits the widow and her son. But at other times, the good is not so obvious. Again the best we can do is to have faith that God is working everything for good.