Through my last drawing, “Consider the Lilies”, I touched on the subject of trusting in God’s plan, even when your circumstances look impossible. Through this drawing I want to go more in depth on the subject. During my reading of scripture and time in prayer, the Lord brought me to 1 Kings 17 to further support this topic. 1 Kings 17 is the beginning of the story of Elijah. At this time, the people of Israel have turned away from God and were putting their trust in lesser things. As a result, the Lord brought a drought to the land, which resulted in a famine, in order to remind the people to turn back to Him. Elijah was in Israel at this time and the Lord had told him to go to the wilderness and trust that the Lord will provide. While in the wilderness, Elijah was able to get water from the brook and the Lord sent ravens to deliver food to him day after day. After the brook had dried up, the Lord told him to go to Zarephath, a pagan land in the middle of nowhere, where he would meet a widow and her son, who were dying of starvation, to provide for him. When he got there and asked the widow for food and water, she informed him that water she can give, but she only had enough food for one more meal for her and her son before they starved and had nothing left. In response, Elijah says to give him the last of what she has and when she goes back there will be enough for her son. In addition to this, every time she goes back, the Lord will provide enough for them. There came a day that the women’s son was sick to the point of death. Elijah brought him to the upper room where he was living and prayed to the Lord that the child’s life would return to him and it was so. Because of this, the mother knew that Elijah was a man of God and the word of the Lord is true.
Throughout this story, we see where Elijah could’ve been hopeless and given up on God. Elijah, however, kept his trust in the Lord and was obedient, and in turn the Lord sustained him. When putting ourselves in Elijah’s shoes, we see that in everything the Lord told him to do, the outcome would not be as we would have thought. The Lord tells him to go to the wilderness and the brook dries up, he goes to the widow and she does not have anything to give, the Lord provides and then her son dies. In every circumstance of this story, God’s provision did not match his expectations. We see, however, that there was a divine purpose in everything that the Lord had done. Because the brook dried up, Elijah went to the widow. Because she had no food to give, she saw how the Lord had miraculously provided for her and her son. Lastly, because the Lord brought breath back into her son’s lungs, her heart was softened and she realized that the God Elijah had spoken of was true. This shows that in trusting and being obedient to God, the Lord could help in leading someone else to be blessed by it and in turn, have trust in God and live in obedience to Him. Sometimes what God is doing through you is not about you at all.
In my artwork, the idea for this drawing came about from a Seth Carpenter song called “Page By Page”. In the chorus it states, “I will trust you page by page. What is faith without a little pain. When the road runs dry and I don’t know why, I’ve learned it’s just a chapter. I will trust you page by page” (2022). This perfectly encapsulates what 1 Kings 17 portrays through Elijah’s journey. In the drawing, the light surrounding what is supposed to represent the Lord’s hand writing my story represents Psalm 119:105 which states, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” When we see how a lamp shines in the dark, we see that the light does not shine very far. It is just enough to see a step or two in front of you. In the same way, we do not see the big picture about what God’s plan is, he just shows us what he wants us to do one step at a time. What he asks of us is to just be obedient in the process and to trust him one page at a time.
References
Carpenter, S. (2022). Page By Page [Lyrics]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kfEPPua00g
NASB: New American Standard Bible. Foundation Publications, Publisher for the Lockman Foundation, 2020
