When you ask God to help you know Him, a difference happens. Life lived knowing about God; and life lived experiencing His Presence. Your eyes are opened to the beauty and intelligent design you now appreciate is God’s handiwork.

You begin to understand that this life has difficulties and challenges and no one is immune to experiencing bad things. In fact we should not be surprised when bad things happen in this world inhabited by humans determined to go their own way. We are part of that humanity. We want what we want. So does everyone else.

And now in 1 Kings 17 we meet one of Gods greatest prophets. His life lived with God present with him was challenging. Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.” v. 1. Can you imagine?

He needed to leave so God directed him to go to the wilderness to a ravine and hide. Ahab is a powerful and truly evil king. And what does God do? “You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there.” v. 4. Every morning and evening the ravens, at God’s direction, brought Elijah bread and meat and the brook supplied water. Can we appreciate that? Can we stop a moment and imagine that wonder? Life lived supplied by God.

When the brook dried up from lack of rain, God again directs Elijah. “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” v. 9. Not only does God supply Elijah but now he supplies a widow and her son with a jar of flour that will not be used up and the jug of oil that did not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land. v. 14.

Imagine. To everyone else living through this time of drought, if they knew of God where was He? If they worshipped other gods where were they? God never stopped being present.

The widow’s son becomes ill to death and through Elijah he is healed. The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!” Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.” v. 22-24. Imagine this moment for each of them!

Jesus speaking in the synagogue in his own hometown reminded them of this event. “I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon.” Luke 4:25-26.

What does that mean for us? Exactly what Elijah knew…the Lord, the God of Israel lives. We can ask for His help to come to know Him. A journey opens and He walks beside us teaching as we are able to learn. It takes time. He supplies.