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.