How God Provides (1 Kin. 17:1-16) > Part 5

Not only does God provide unconventionally for His people, but He also provides illogically (1 Kin. 17: 7-11).  God sent His servant, Elijah, to a pagan city to receive care and nourishment from a widow idolater.  Does that make sense to you?  Oh, and the woman was so poor she literally didn't have two sticks to rub together at home.  She couldn't sustain herself and her dependent son, let alone host a guest for breakfast.

Such was the situation in which God provided for Elijah.  The already-burdened widow took on a heavier load.  Here is a statement we need to understand:  God has logic, since there is nothing He does not know, but that doesn't mean He's obligated to act logically.  He has no need of counselors, yet He does things that make earthly wise men scream, "What?!"  Isaiah reminds us that there is a world of difference between God's thoughts and ours.  "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isa. 55:9).

God's preferred methods of providence are baffling at times.  When He doesn't make sense, and there will be times when He doesn't, that is not the time to walk away.  Indeed, "God works in mysterious ways" (William Cowper).  Isaiah 28:21 mentions that God will "do His task, His unusual task" and "work His work, His extraordinary work."  Job 9:10 reminds us that God "does great things, unfathomable, and wondrous works without number."

What we struggle against is human logic.  "God, the widow isn't supposed to provide for me; I'm supposed to provide for her."  Had Elijah's logic replaced God's Word, Elijah could've remained a starving prophet without a country and the widow at Zarephath might never have experienced a miracle.  May we learn to become okay with being unable to predict or explain God's provision.  It's more exciting just to embrace what He provides.