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I had lunch with a friend of mine yesterday. He is going through some challenges as it relates to his occupation, his income, his way of life. As we were leaving the restaurant he told me that he and another friend were talking about this same concern and his friend looked at him and made a very interesting comment. His friend said "Well, it looks like the Lord is going to give you an opportunity to trust him!" As I drove away I could not get that thought out of my mind. I wondered why we all don't get those opportunities, or do we?  Do we truly depend on the Lord for our next paycheck, our next meal or where we will sleep tonight? I woke up this morning and continued my reading in I Kings and came across these verses:

I Kings 17: 1 - 6 - 1 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."  2 Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: 3 "Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. 4 You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there." 5 So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. 6 The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.

Talk about complete dependence on the Lord! God did not tell him to take anything. He did not say "Run home and grab a couple of blankets, an extra pair of shoes and a flask of water. God said go and verse 5 says "So he did what the LORD had told him." Complete trust and faith in God. No questions about anything. No questions about how long he would have to stay, no questions about why the Kerith Ravine and not a quaint little resort by the Dead Sea, no why me and not someone else. He did what the LORD had told him. As a result of his obedience, the LORD provided for his every need. Verse 6 says The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. In essence, he was able to make sandwiches every day. We have no idea what kind of bread or meat it was nor do we know where it came from. In my somewhat twisted way of thinking I wonder if it came from one of the LORD's enemy's homes. I wonder if the person was busy baking bread, setting it out on a window seal to cool and the ravens came and picked some up each day. Or if the LORD's enemy killed a cow and as they were cleaning it and cutting it up if the ravens came and grabbed some of it as well. Maybe it was simply locust they picked up off of the ground. Who knows, these are insignificant details. The main point is that when Elijah was faithful to do what the LORD asked him to do, the LORD provided. The same type of faith and trust was witnessed hundreds of years earlier when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son. 

Genesis 22: 9-14 -   9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. 12 "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." 13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."

Again, this is an example of God providing when men step out in faith and obey. 

One last series of verses on this. The following verses are from Christ when he was teaching his disciples several lessons along the mountain side around the Sea of Galilee.

Matthew 6: 25, 26 - 25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 

God will meet our needs when we are doing what he has called us to do. Whether he chooses to provide through the ravens, the rams or the riches of a brother we do not know. But we can believe that he will provide.