Fed by those hungry

Then the LORD said to Elijah, “Go and live in the village of Zarephath, near the city of Sidon. I have instructed a widow there to feed you.” — 1 Kings 17:8-9

The following comes from the online resource The Times of Israel, October 26, 2023.

“The [recent] attacks involved a level of violence unprecedented in both its nature and scale, with the terrorists going house-to-house and slaughtering more than 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians who died on the first day.”

The report continues. “Babies, children, teenagers, elderly people and entire families were shot dead, stabbed with knives or mutilated with axes, survivors have said.”

In the face of this visceral, jaw-dropping and heart-wrenching carnage, it can be challenging to hear God saying to Elijah what God is also saying to us. Afterall, widows at the time were completely marginalized and often victimized by the male dominated culture. If the dissociated and disenfranchised had anything, it was very, very, very little.

Yet in tragic times, it is often the powerless who hold the message of charity, humanity and commonality. Those who are powerless, beaten and even killed are the very ones who do feed us by directing us into action from heinous crimes of war.

Let’s not just listen to but be fed by those who can feed us so that we can feed and rescue others.

PRAYER: Dear Lord God, we can feel paralyzed to these horrors of war, or we can choose to be fed by the very ones who do not know where or when they will eat again. Help us respond not by our way but Yours. Amen.