Following God is not always easy. We saw that in yesterday’s passage as Elijah had to hide out in a creekbed and eat carrion that ravens brought to him. We’ll see it tomorrow when he asked a starving widow to trust God enough to make some food for him so that God would provide food for her and her son during a famine.

But today’s passage was a severe test for both the widow and for Elijah. She had no one but her son to care for her in her old age, and now he had become sick to the point of death. And Elijah was once again confronted with his own weakness, his own inability to help this woman who had trusted him.

Maybe that’s where you are today. Maybe you feel like you’ve lost everything that is important to you. Maybe you feel like you are just completely helpless to straighten out all the problems that surround you. If that’s so, then look at what Elijah, the prophet of God, did. Instead of trying to figure out what to do on his own, instead of trying to solve this problem in his own strength, he simply prayed to the Lord earnestly and fervently. He depended on God to save the widow’s son.

And that’s exactly what happened. God raised the child from the dead. And in the process, God strengthened both Elijah’s faith and the faith of the widow. And the good news is that we serve the same God, Who is still able to bring glory to Himself and to demonstrate the truth of His Word, even in the most difficult situations we face. So, in spite of how impossible the problems we face may seem, will we trust Him today?

I Kings 17:17-24 (NAS)

17 Now it came about after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became sick; and his sickness was so severe, that there was no breath left in him.
18 So she said to Elijah, “What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance, and to put my son to death!”
19 And he said to her, “Give me your son.” Then he took him from her bosom and carried him up to the upper room where he was living, and laid him on his own bed.
20 And he called to the LORD and said, “O LORD my God, hast Thou also brought calamity to the widow with whom I am staying, by causing her son to die?”
21 Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and called to the LORD, and said, “O LORD my God, I pray Thee, let this child’s life return to him.”
22 And the LORD heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived.
23 And Elijah took the child, and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother; and Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.”
24 Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth.”