Pick-up Sticks
There is a story in the bible about the great prophet Elijah. A famine ravaged the land – no rain fell for 3+ years. Along with the rest of the nation, Elijah was hungry. He visits a widow who is gathering sticks for a fire. While performing this chore, she is planning the last meal she and her son will ever eat. They’ve nothing left in the house but a bit of flour and oil.
Imagine the weight this poor widow woman carried in the bundle of sticks she gathered. With each branch and twig she added to her pile, her horror increased. Her son was doomed to die. She knew both he – her pride and joy – would starve to death.
Fear. It plays thick in the story.
The weight she carried in those sticks wasn’t physical but emotional. She bore the burden of knowing she couldn’t care for the one thing she cared about most. Fear overtook her life.
Until Elijah appears.
More than words?
He claimed to be a prophet. He said he spoke with the authority of God, the Lord of Israel. He asked for some of her precious remaining bread. He followed his request with the most audacious possible –
“Don’t be afraid.”
It was like rain to the desert of her soul had become. For the days, weeks and months, all she had known was fear. The supplies will run out, and now they are gone.
“Don’t be afraid.”
I wonder if those words of comfort alone gave her the power to take the next step of faith. She fed the prophet AND her son. And then she fed them again the next day. And the next. And the next. Each day her fear melts away little by little.
Today, some of you are carrying a burden just like this widow. You carry the weight of fear, and you continue to add to it. Each passing day seems to confirm the thought, “There is no way out.”
I hope the words of the prophet shout to you,
“Don’t be afraid.”
Words of Life.
Hundreds of years later another man walked the earth claiming not just to speak for God but to BE God. He backed this bold statement up by healing the sick, feeding the masses and raising the dead.
He is a greater Elijah. He too whispers those same words to us,
“Don’t be afraid.”
He tells us His burden is easy, and it is. His burden isn’t fear. It’s life.
Now believe.
In the story of the widow and the prophet, the woman nearly loses her son a second time. In an instant, the weight of fear returns. Elijah rides to the rescue again. The boy is healed. It’s as if something finally clicks in the woman’s head. She proclaims to the prophet, “I know for sure you are a man of God, and the Lord truly speaks through you.”
Now she believes.
The apostle Peter in a letter to his friends writes,
Give all your cares and worries to God, for He cares about you. -1 Peter 5:7
It’s a word for us. Give your cares and worries to Jesus. When you do, He will take them. And I promise you this, you’ll begin to believe.
Then you will say like the widow and the soldier at the foot of the cross (Matthew 27:54), “Truly you are the Son of God!”
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