A Bird And A Bible
I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
Psalm 37:25
The hard times of life can tempt us with the question, “Am I forsaken of God? Has He forgotten about me?” The Lord is always mindful of us, but many times we are not mindful of how He sends blessings our way. In this devotion, I want to show you how blessings can come in very unexpected ways.
A Bird
In 1 Kings 17, we find a prophet of God who is hiding by a brook in the wilderness. This prophet had just declared a drought in the land of Israel. Now, this man is at the top of King Ahab’s most wanted list. All alone and without food to eat, Elijah looks toward the sky as he waits patiently on a promise. All at once, he hears the fluttering of wings! Is it an angel? No, it’s an ugly ole raven. Dinner has just been delivered!
The idea of such an unclean bird being commanded to feed the prophet has baffled many scholars. Some have even tried to interpret the meaning to be “merchants” or “Arabians.” However, most Bible scholars agree that the original word “oreb” does indeed refer to that dirty ole raven bird.
And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook.
1 Kings 17:6
Why couldn’t God have rained down manna as He did for the children of Israel? Why couldn’t He have sent an angel as in chapter 19? If I have learned anything about my walk with the Lord it is this. God places a supreme value on our faith and will consistently answer our prayers in ways that only faith can achieve. Hear me now. Just because you cannot understand Him doesn’t mean that you cannot trust Him. While we are busy working on an answer to our problem, our loving Father is working on us in ways that our finite minds could never comprehend.
A Bible
Dr. Ravi Zacharias tells a story of his mission trip to Vietnam in 1971. During his time there, a young 17-year-old man named Pham Hien was his interpreter. Shortly after Dr. Zacharias departed, the communist government arrested Pham and imprisoned him for his faith. Their goal was to erase Pham’s belief in God so they began to torture him, both physically and mentally. His beloved Bible was taken from him and replaced by “The Communist Manifesto” written by atheist Carl Marx.
After a year of torture, Pham began to doubt that God would ever answer his prayers for release. One night in despair, Pham said, “God, maybe you’re not out there. I’m giving up hope. Tomorrow when I wake up, I’m not going to pray anymore.”
The next morning, Pham was ordered to clean out the prison latrine. The sanitary conditions were awful and this humiliating task was designed to break him even further. Pham wrapped a handkerchief around his nose and mouth and started cleaning out the muck. As he worked, he saw a scrap of paper smeared with human excrement. On the page, he noticed some words written in English. His eyes were drawn to the words “Romans 8”. Tears began to flow as he read the words:
28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
Romans 8
35 Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution?
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Pham learned that a prison officer had been using torn pages from a confiscated Bible as toilet paper. Day after day, he found other pages from the Bible in the dung heap. He would carefully wash those pages and read them in his prison cell. God had met Pham in the lowest place of his life.
That story moves me to tears every time I read it. Once again, we see a blessing from the Lord in the most unexpected way. I wish time would permit me to share the many personal stories that have happened in our ministry. I remember as a child, we were ministering in an unnamed state and were hitting it very hard financially. Without much food in the pantry, my parent’s didn’t know anything else to do but trust God. Would you know that God sent the neighborhood drunk to our door? Without shirt or shoes, he would repeatedly bring us vegetables from his garden.
If I live to be one hundred, I will never forget how God provided for us through the most unlikely person. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, let’s begin looking for God in unexpected places. When you uncover an unexpected blessing, encourage someone else with your testimony!
Lord, we thank you for being a very present help in the time of trouble. You said that you would never leave us nor forsake us. We give you thanks for the unexpected and may the events in our lives point others to your faithful loving care. In Jesus’ name, Amen.