The prophet Elijah had been through his own string of hardships by the time he escaped to the shade of a broom tree in the wilderness in 1 Kings 19. He bore the grief of his community’s sins alongside the anguish of having had to slaughter hundreds of false prophets. And now his enemies were hunting him down. He must have felt utterly alone and bone-weary by the time he tells the Lord he’s had enough. “Take away my life,” he prays before falling asleep.
How does the Lord respond? Does he tell Elijah to get up, reminding him that this is all par for the course of life as a prophet? No. He lets Elijah sleep. He sends an angel to feed him. This angel of the Lord says nothing more than, “Arise and eat,” as he lays a hot cake and jar of water before him. A second time, the angel wakes Elijah only to feed him again. When Elijah is at his weakest and weariest, the Lord ministers first to his bodily needs. Then, Elijah “arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, the mount of God” (1 Kings 19:8).
Elijah went on to experience the Lord’s glory and presence in breathtaking ways on that mountain and to pass the baton of his ministry to Elisha. But before all that, God simply fed him.
I, too, have tasted this ministry of the Lord. When I was most tempted to believe he didn’t care that the hits kept coming, someone would show up with a casserole. When the kids and I got (a bad version of) the coronavirus not long after Mom’s funeral, friends from our local Afghan restaurant left “a meal” on our doorstep — enough comfort food for a week. Between our daughter’s early birth, a minor surgery for our son, a major surgery for our other daughter, and my mom’s death in the span of six months, members of our church home group brought us food so many times. The kids began requesting “Miss Lauren’s jambalaya” as if we lived in a restaurant.
Jesus also met bodily needs as he drew people to himself during his earthly ministry. John 6 records crowds coming to him to be healed from their sicknesses. When there didn’t seem to be any bread to spare, Jesus miraculously fed them anyway. But when they return for more the next day, asking this miracle worker to become a slot machine for their daily dose of manna, Jesus redirects: “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:32–35).
This Savior who would suffer knew: There is a hunger in us no amount of comfort food can fill. When grief hollows us out, the hunger pangs of this longing within can grow unbearably loud. This is why we want to run, to keep moving, to distract ourselves, to fill our bellies with anything and everything else. But what if we could learn to hold still, right there in the midst of our great need? What if we found that the ache is the very thing that leads us to the only one who can satisfy it?
As my friend Caroline Cobb sings, “There is a table only the hungry find … when need is all you need.
Adapted from We Shall All Be Changed by Whitney K. Pipkin (© 2024). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.