Cherith and Zarephath

For the past four weeks or so, my church has been doing a Bible Study series on Elijah.  No, not my nephew.  Haha, I can’t imagine my priest giving a talk on my nephew: “Elijah is an interesting child.  He’s potty trained yet chooses to pee and poop in various locations, i.e. the pool, the front steps to his house, and the living room floor.  He’s also a sugar fiend, and loves to negotiate the amount of his dinner that he has to eat.  He also likes Wolverine and Iron Man.”

Back to the other Elijah.  My priest’s whole take on this man is that he was a hero.  Actually, you can listen for yourself.  And as I’ve been following this series, parts of Elijah’s life really seemed to coincide with mine.  Especially these days.  In 1 Kings 17, the first half of Elijah’s story is told.  My priest mentioned that whenever we think of Elijah, we always think about the Elijah in chapter 18.  The guy who gave Ahab the business.  The guy who called fire down from heaven.  But the Elijah in chapter 17 is the Elijah I’ve come to know firsthand, through my own life.

Between Cherith and Zarephath, Elijah goes through a lot of stuff.  A lot of hard stuff.  But it’s because of Cherith and Zarephath that Elijah is able to be the man of God we know him to be later on.  So the point that my priest has been driving home is that we have to go through stuff if we want God to be able to use us in any noteworthy way. 

Right now, life is hard.  In almost every possible way.  And instead of getting easier, it’s just gotten harder.  Kind of like that whole “when it rains, it pours.”  Yeah.  That’s how I feel.  But I’m hanging in there.  Why?  There’s no logical or reasonable way to explain it.  I just have this feeling that it will all work out.  And not just work out…but that things will be awesome later on.  If I didn’t have that feeling, I would still be in bed, refusing to wake up and get on with the day.  Probably in the fetal position.  Instead, I woke up this morning and knew today was going to be hard; but I got out of bed anyway.  Because God’s not going to leave me hanging.  God’s going to make it all work out.  God’s going to make me better and stronger because of it.  And not because I asked God to, but because He promised He would….before today even happened.

These days are my Cherith and my Zarephath.  And as much as it really hurts right now, I know what’s around the corner.  Chapter 18 is around the corner.  And I’m hoping that’s what makes it all worth it.