Thoughts of Grace

Hearts on a wall.

Good Morning

! Kings 17:5-7
So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord: for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook. And it came to pass after a while, that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land.

Week after week, with unfaltering and steadfast spirit,
Elijah watched that dwindling brook;
often tempted to stagger through unbelief,
but refusing to allow his circumstances
to come between himself and God.
Unbelief sees God through circumstances,
as we sometimes see the sun shorn of his rays through smoky air;
but faith puts God between itself and circumstances,
and looks at them through Him.
And so the dwindling brook became a silver thread;
and the silver thread stood presently in pools
at the foot of the largest boulders;
and the pools shrank.
The birds fled;
the wild creatures of field and forest came no more to drink;
the brook was dry.
Only then to his patient and unwavering spirit,
“the work of the Lord came, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath’.

Most of us would have gotten anxious
and worn with planning long before that.
We should have ceased our songs as soon as the streamlet
caroled less musically over its rocky bed;
and with harps swinging on the willows,
we should have paced to and fro upon the withering grass,
lost in pensive thought.
And probably, long ere the brook was dry,
we should have devised some plan,
and asking God’s blessing on it,
would have started off elsewhere.  ( How true)

God often does extricate us,
because His mercy endureth forever;
but if we had only waited first
to see the unfolding of His plans;
we should never have found ourselves landed
in such an inextricable labyrinth;
and we should never have been compelled
to retrace our steps with so many tears of shame.
Wait, patiently wait!
F. B. Meyer

Wait for God’s leading . . . Today
With my prayers, desiring yours, Leslie