1 Kings 17:1-7: a reflection

1Elijah the Tishbite, who was one of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” 2Then the LORD’s word came to him, saying, 3“Go away from here, turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, that is before the Jordan. 4You shall drink from the brook. I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” 5So he went and did according to the LORD’s word, for he went and lived by the brook Cherith that is before the Jordan. 6The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the brook. 7After a while, the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

Elijah announces a drought and is then sent by God to a hidden place, a small brook called Cherith, where he is to drink from the stream and be fed by ravens. It is a strange provision. Ravens, scavenging birds, bring him bread and meat morning and evening, and the brook gives him water. God sustains his prophet in the wilderness through the most unlikely of means, proving that he is not limited to ordinary channels when he wants to provide.

But then a hard thing happens: after a while, the brook dries up, because there was no rain in the land. The very stream God had sent Elijah to now fails. This was not a sign that God had forgotten him; it was the way God moved him on to the next place of provision, to a widow's home where the next chapter of his story would unfold. The drying brook was not abandonment but redirection.

God still provides in unexpected ways, and he sometimes lets a familiar source of provision dry up. When a job, a relationship, a season that once sustained you begins to fail, it is easy to feel forsaken. But the drying brook may be God's way of moving you toward the next thing he has prepared. Trust the God who fed Elijah by ravens to provide for you too, even when the old stream runs dry. He has not run out of ways to sustain his own.

Lord, you fed Elijah by ravens and by a wilderness brook, and when that brook dried up, it was only to move him toward your next provision. When a familiar source in my life begins to fail, keep me from thinking you have forgotten me. Help me to trust that the drying brook is your redirection, and that you have not run out of ways to sustain me. Amen.