For almost all of my life, Elijah has been one of my favorite prophets. When I don’t know what else to read in the scriptures, I read about him, because I empathize with him the most and because it gives me hope. You see, I feel a lot about myself like Elijah felt about himself, and God blessed him despite his personality and self-deprecation. I hope that God will do for me what He did for Elijah, and moreso I hope that Elijah’s promises to us will be true for me as well.
Elijah appears suddenly and dramatically from nowhere. He immediately has a courageous conversation with King Ahab and comes under duress for commanding this wicked king to repent. Last Sunday my father asked me to consider that I am stonewalled in life directly because I also challenge the GOBNet. It is possible that they are doing things on purpose to make sure that I make as little progress as possible. This is where the promises of Elijah begin.
Like Elijah, I have said hard things to people who believed themselves to be the moral and legal authority. Men in positions of earthly power may not know my name, but they know that I stood up to them when they tried to do things that were without virtue. Each time I go do this, I pray that God will help me after I put what I have at risk to tilt at windmills of the world. Usually, the consequences are paltry, and although I am not elevated, I am at least not punished. A woman I know asked me yesterday why I would do this, and I told her “people always say that someone should do something, and that’s what I’m doing. Rather than wait for someone else, I’m doing something” and then I trust that God will sustain me too.
God provided for Elijah and for all of those who sustained the prophet. Having risked everything to witness for God before a wicked king, Elijah was homeless, penniless, and friendless, doomed to wander about in a land beset by dearth and famine begging for sustenance. Enter the widow of Zarephath. God commands Elijah to go there and find a widow woman from whom he can gain sustenance. Although the scriptures tell us that God commanded this woman to provide for Elijah, when Elijah arrives she seems unaware of this commandment and resists him. Elijah then gives her this challenge with a promise:
Make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.
In other words, if you give to God first, He will make sure that you always have enough of what you actually need to live a good life.
My very first month as a missionary in Austria, I was left with a single Austrian shilling to my name. I keep it on the bookshelf in the living room to remind myself that God has always given me enough. He always makes sure that I have what I need and in a manner that it cannot be taken from me. God’s promise of Zarapheth is not that we will be wealthy or have enough with which to glut ourselves or that things will be peachy keen but that there will be enough to give us an abundance of life.
From there the story continues with the same promise. When the widow’s son dies, Elijah goes before the Lord concerned for this surprising turn in the life of the widow woman. Elijah brings the son back to life and restores him to his mother before going on his way. We may not always have what we like when we like or the way we like, but if we give God first, He always restores to us life. God constantly commands us to prove and trust and exercise faith by giving Him something. The promise comes that He is bound when we do what He says, and that when the time is right we will have all that He promised. The Law of the Harvest teaches us that we reap what we sow, and so if we have not reaped today what we sowed, some day we must.
I sometimes find it difficult to trust God. He asks me regularly to sacrifice something dear to me or simply allows the adversary to take it away from me. I try to remember in those moments that that is my lesson- the lesson of Zarapheth. Give God first, and there will not only be enough, but I will not have to worry about it when there is room enough to receive. Make me a little cake first, and I promise you in the name of God that He will sustain you. Like Abraham tells Isaac, the Lord will provide. There was no logical way to keep Elijah’s promise, but it was kept, and Elijah ate until the famine subsided. If we go and do as the widow from Zarapheth, there will be oil and meal in our cruse enough to sustain us and give us an abundant life.
Despite the miracles he saw and wrought, Elijah struggled after that widow woman. Eventually he would ask God to kill him and take him home because things just weren’t turning out well for anyone. He probably blamed himself and felt a poor vessel to do these things for God. Neal A Maxwell wrote in “Deposition of a Disciple” that “God gives the shovels and picks to the chosen because they are willing to roll up their sleeves and get dirty. They may not be the most capable, but they are the most available” and that’s why they are chosen. I don’t know why things happen. I don’t pretend to have the ability to conceptualize God’s plan. I have seen Him bless me that my oil and meal sufficed. Somehow I find the strength every day to keep moving forward and not quit despite disappointments and setbacks. For some reason, He chooses to ask me and allow me to talk about Him with all who will listen even when they lose things they love in order to comply with His commandments.
The message of Zarapheth is to trust God up front and the promise will come. Everywhere Elijah went, he was taken care of and those who supported him had their needs met too. When God inspires you to do something, be something, or say something, you should go and act on that inspiration knowing that He sustains His servants. When we try to run like Jonah, all we do is postpone possibilities for the blessings God promises. When we resist like Ahab, eventually we meet with ruin and rejection by those mortals or idols on whom we rely instead. Eventually, every man must make the leap from the lion’s head and first make a cake for God, because only those can drink from the cup of eternal life who learned to listen to Him who fills it. The message of Zarapheth is clear- if you want to really live, trust God, patiently wait, and follow the direction of His servants.
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