God miraculously provides food for Elijah & the Widow, 1 Kings 17:8-16

And a modern-day Jonah

Did Jesus really make water into wine at the wedding in Cana? Was Jonah really swallowed by a fish? Many people, including whole church denominations, do not believe God makes miracles anymore. But also we today are a lot less aware of the many surprising possibilities of the natural world.

In his lesson about Jonah, Dr. J. Vernon McGee tells the story of a Royal Navy sailor who endured a Jonah-like adventure around the turn of the century when he fell overboard in the South Pacific. 2 days later his mates were flabbergasted to find the sailor unconscious (due to low oxygen, I imagine) inside the belly of a whale they had caught and were cutting open. The sailor came to and was completely fine. Years later when he was traveling as a part of a circus “freak show,” billed as a modern-day Jonah, a medical doctor, the head of the health department of Los Angeles, examined him and reported that his skin was yellowish-brown, looking almost as if burned, but not quite. And with not a hair on his body. The top layer of his skin and all his hair had been completely digested by the whale’s stomach juices. No wonder the people of Nineveh believed Jonah when she showed up looking like that.

Divine providence

Previously, I mentioned it’s possible for God to miraculously provide his people with food in a famine. Some people instinctively sense it’s true, while others are completely closed to the possibility.

In 1 Kings 17:6, God commands the ravens to bring Elijah food. Later in the same chapter, the brook dries up, so God instructs Elijah to go to Zarephath in Sidon (modern-day Lebanon and the place where Jezebel was from), saying, “…I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.”

But the widow had almost no food, just a handful of flour and a small bit of oil left. And yet Elijah asked her to bring him a small loaf first. It was an act of faith to cook for the prophet first. The flour and oil never ran out until the drought was over, just as Elijah said.

1 Kings 17:8-16

Elijah and the Widow

⁸ Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ⁹ “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” ¹⁰ So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, indeed a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Please bring me a little water in a cup, that I may drink.” ¹¹ And as she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”

¹² So she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a ^[a]jar; and see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”

¹³ And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me; and afterward make some for yourself and your son. ¹⁴ For thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.’ ”

¹⁵ So she went away and did according to the word of Elijah; and she and he and her household ate for many days. ¹⁶ The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke by Elijah.

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