I

find it amazing that of all the places God could send Elijah, he sent

the prophet to a widow in Zarephath. It was probably surprising to

Elijah too. God had sent him out of Israel, the land of his people.

This caused Elijah to depend on the hospitality of an outsider.

God

directed this widow to supply Elijah with food, and yet she herself

was very poor. In several ways—being a widow, poor, and from a land

outside Israel—she was one of the last people we might expect to be

chosen as a host for a prophet of the Lord. From the story, it sounds

like she wasn’t a follower of God either.

In

our focus on religion, we often gauge success on the basis of

performance: How often do you pray to God? Do you follow the

teachings of God’s Word? Do you worship God faithfully? In this

story, however, the God of grace uses someone who is foreign to all

of those ideas. That’s what makes grace so amazing—we can do

nothing to earn it.

God

goes to the outsider. He goes to people who are on the margins. The

widow and Elijah are both blessed by each other’s presence and

help. There’s no place for superiority or inferiority. It is

through embracing the other that grace can be mutually experienced.

When we follow God’s direction, we not only share his grace with

others but also receive it.