Today I am going to reflect on two Old Testament readings, one from today’s Mass readings, and the other from today’s Office of Readings. Both have the same message, presented in slightly different ways: God will Provide.
Our Old Testament Mass reading for today (1 Kings 17:7‑16), is a continuation of yesterday’s reading. Elijah is God’s servant who is called to confront the evil King Ahab. Yesterday, Elijah tells the king that a long-lasting drought is coming. As the drought begins, Elijah retreats to a God-given haven where safety, water and food are all provided by God. Elijah is comfortable. Then comes today’s reading. God pulls him from this safe existence and sends Elijah to the widow of Zarephath to learn the principle of giving, even when it is impossible, to teach him that God will provide.
Zarephath was a village in modern-day Lebanon, north of Israel. Another person in 1 Kings came from this region: Jezebel, King Ahab’s pagan wife. This area was the center of Baal worship. God is taking Elijah from his safe haven and sends him to Zarephath in Sidon, the heart of enemy territory. God’s instruction to Elijah is to go to a place where he is not safe, and he is to stay there.
When Elijah arrives, he finds a hopeless situation. He finds a widow gathering sticks to prepare one final meal, after which she and her son will starve to death. I can hear Elijah’s prayer: “Lord, the ravens were my friends, the water was so plentiful. Why are you sending me to a widow gathering sticks?” But God did send him there. There must be a reason. Elijah has a strange response, he doesn’t offer to help the woman, but instead he asks her to help him. This is the only way that Elijah can know for sure if she is the person God wanted him to meet. Her response is confirming. She is in an impossible situation. What does Elijah say to her? “Do not be afraid.” (1 Kings 17:13). I’m sure she was glad to hear that.
Elijah then gives the woman odd instructions. Before fixing a final meager meal for herself and her son, Elijah tells her to fix HIM something from her meager supplies first. From a humane perspective, the instruction makes no sense. But somehow, she has faith to believe what Elijah said. She left it all up to God. She had faith that God will provide. And he does. Because of her hospitality, God gave her a never-emptying jar of flour and likewise a jug of oil. Pure miracles. God will provide. He will give you just enough.
Practice the discipline of giving, even when it makes no sense, and God will provide you enough for your needs. This is the example of the widow. This is the lesson Elijah needed to learn. God will provide.
A second story (Joshua 2:1‑24), taken from today’s Office of Readings, involves Joshua’s spies who were sent into Jericho to scope out the city, to find the best way to capture the city and the surrounding land. In this story our heroes run into an unlikely heroine, Rahab the harlot. It is likely Rahab was an innkeeper. Inns of the era often were run by women, who sometimes would offer prostitution services to the male patrons. The rabble of society would gather there, and conspiracies cooked up there were as common as the sun’s rising and setting. Indeed, this was so frequent an occurrence that innkeepers often served as informants to the government and would be executed if they did not turn conspirators in. The Jewish spies went there because it would be a good place to learn about the land and to pick up necessary intelligence, and Rahab’s duty to report their plot influences her plea for mercy later in the narrative.
Her willingness to align herself with the spies’ mission and thereby enable them to do what God required in the execution of His program, is a massively significant choice. Surely Rahab knew why the men where there and what their plans would mean for Jericho and Canaan. But she still helped them. One could say she identified with them. She switched sides. She joined the opposing team. Her willingness to aid and ally with these men—even withholding information so as to protect them—evidenced a comprehensive turning of her back on her past, her culture, and everything it stood for. She cast in her lot with God’s people and enabled their success to the detriment of her own wicked, ungodly society. Here we see the beginnings of a committed heart that will soon blossom into saving faith.
The biblical notion of faith is to receive a word from God and to believingly embrace it, evidenced by obedience. Rahab sees these men as emissaries from the True God and she embraces what little she knows about Him. Her fear of the power and might of this God influences her to embrace Him. Clearly, she sees Him as the Supreme One and it is in her best interests to align herself with Him. This explains her aiding the spies: she knows they are on God’s side, and she wants His protection and deliverance from the wrath that is coming. So she makes a deal with the spies: She will not expose them to the Canaanites if they protect her from the coming destruction. If God’s people do not come through for her, she and everyone she loves is dead!
There are interesting—and I think intentional—parallels to Passover in this reading. In both cases someone is coming to render judgment on God’s enemies; in both cases arrangements are mercifully made for certain people to escape those judgments; even a similarly colored marker is posted in a visible spot so that when the destroyer(s) see it they will know to “pass over” the people in that home.
For the real end to the story, we must turn to Joshua 6:23-25. The spies have returned to Joshua, thanks to Rahab’s aid, and they tell Joshua of the projected success of the conquest (Joshua 2:23-24). During the conquest of Jericho and the slaughter of the inhabitants to cleanse and set apart the land for God’s purposes, Joshua commands the two spies to go back to Rahab and rescue her family and her possessions. They took her, all her relatives, and all she had, outside of Jericho and Rahab, and presumably her family, were welcomed into the nation of Israel
The implications and applications of this narrative are many. First is that God can use anybody He chooses, even a prostitute, to accomplish His purposes and further His program; and that our past need not limit an omnipotent and sovereign God into what service He might call us to in the future. Second, the blessing that comes from obedience. Rahab was undoubtedly a true convert, and her faith, though small at first, clearly bore good fruit. God mercifully blessed this woman, in this life, not merely in heaven, beyond her wildest imagining: Her whole family and even everything she owned was spared. Her house, which was on the wall of Jericho, would have been the only part of the wall still standing—an unmistakable display of the omnipotence of God directed towards her personally. She was welcomed into the nation of Israel, where she was a recipient of covenant blessing and the fullness of God’s revelation. She was even given the gift of redeemed sexuality through godly marriage and the gift of motherhood, whose great-great grandson would be none other than David! God is undoubtedly a lavish Savior—and that same Savior is ours too!
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!