Elijah Enters the Scene

Today I read 1 Elijah 17 which introduces us to Elijah.  Elijah is one of my all time favorite prophets.  If I had been a prophet back in the ancient days I imagine I would have been like Elijah.  My favorite scene is not in this chapter, but we'll get there.  This chapter lets us know that Ahab was not favored of the Lord as He sent Elijah to tell Ahab that He was sending a drought.

After Elijah had lived near a brook for 3 years being fed by ravens sent by the Lord, he left and went to a town where God told him to search out a widow He had prepared.  Elijah found the widow and asked her to make him a cake for him before she made one for herself and her son to share before they died.  You know, growing up I was always impressed by the faith of this good sister, feeding a stranger before she fed herself and her son, but now, I have to wonder, what was her thought process?  I mean, if it had been me, I'm not sure I could have stopped myself from thinking, "Well, I'm going to starve anyway.  Maybe what this guy says is true and maybe it isn't, but since it really won't make a difference if I eat this cake or not, sure, why not?"

Now, I could be doing this good sister a HUGE injustice.  It does say that she was prepared of the Lord to receive Elijah, so maybe she knew he would ask this of her and she already had the faith necessary to take him at his word.  Most likely she did.  I imagine she was prepared much like Amulek in the Book of Mormon was, who saw and angel who told him to feed a man of God who had fasted much and was hungered.  Perhaps the widow knew she would have to feed Elijah and so it wasn't a matter of despondence but rather of faith, of believing what God told her.  We will know one day.

The last few verses of this chapter contain one of the greatest miracles of all time!  The widow's son dies while Elijah is there at the house and Elijah raises him from the dead!  To my knowledge this has only been accomplished by a few others in all of history.  The only ones I know of are Nephi at the time of Christ's Resurrection, Jesus Himself, and Elijah.  There might be more in the scriptures that I am forgetting about, but it is a rare occurrence for Heavenly Father to allow someone who has died to come back to this earth.  I once heard that Heavenly Father is very concerned with how people enter this life, and how they leave it, and everything I have seen and learned since that time I heard that statement has only confirmed it.  After the unpardonable sin, the two worst sins a person can commit are murder and then adultery/fornication.  Life is sacred and only Heavenly Father can decide who leaves this life without consequence and while we have been allowed to help participate in the creation of life, it needs to be on God's terms, not ours.  Anything else will earn us His wrath.  Until tomorrow.