Biblical Mysteries2 min read

The Ravens Fed Him

Every morning and evening, the birds came. With bread. With meat.

📖Based on 1 Kings 17:6

He had just told Ahab there would be no rain.

No dew either. For years.

Then God told him to hide.

Depart from here and turn eastward and hide by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan.

You shall drink from the brook.

And I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.

Commanded the ravens.

Not a farmer. Not a family. Not an angel.

Ravens.

Birds known for taking, not giving.

Birds that the law declared unclean.

And God had commanded them.

Elijah went. He did according to the word of the LORD.

He drank from the brook.

And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning.

And bread and meat in the evening.

Every day.

Twice a day.

No explanation of where they got it.

No description of how it felt to sit alone beside a brook in the wilderness and watch black birds land with food.

No record of what Elijah thought about during those days.

The brook eventually dried up because of the drought he had himself announced.

And then God sent him on.

But first there had been the brook.

And the ravens.

In the wilderness that seemed like abandonment.

God had arranged a table.

Through the least likely waiters imaginable.

Scripture — 1 Kings 17:6
"And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook."

Reflection

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The ravens were unclean by law. God used them anyway. His provision is not limited to clean channels.

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Elijah was hiding, alone, in wilderness. The provision that reached him there was proof that isolation is never beyond God's supply.

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