Elijah - The Ordinary Made Extraordinary

Elijah’s bold appearance before king Ahab introduces us to the incredible life of an ordinary man made extraordinary by the extraordinary God.

This extraordinary God used some unorthodox means to provide for the prophet during the season of drought.

He picks ordinary ravens - not a peacock or a condor or a bold eagle, but a grumpy-looking, plain old raven -  to bring him food twice a day by the brook Cherith - a Cinderella-ish kind of scenario, minus the fairy tale. 

When the brook dries up due to the drought, God sends Elijah to the region of Sidon (homeland of Ahab’s infamous bride Jezabel ?!!!), to an ordinary widow, a single-parent to a young boy, whose ordinary jar of flour and ordinary bottle of oil became containers for extraordinary miracle.

The God of the rainy clouds is the God of the birds and the beasts who is the God of the mixing bowl and the bread basket and the bottle of canola oil.

This makes me pause.

This makes me stop.

This makes me take a second look at all the ordinary stuff my life is immersed in.  At all the taken-for-granted ordinary, all the common-place ordinary, easily-ignored-easily-overlooked ordinary.

And it makes me wonder if I might be… if I could be…passing over a miracle while I reach over this ordinary, while I extend my arm over the common-place towards some miraculous, spectacular manifestation of God’s presence and power… somewhere else… and not here… not now?

Is my soul going hungry, waiting for exquisite manna from heaven, while all along a sparrow is spreading the table before my very eyes?

Is God the God who is far away, and not the God who is near? And if I want to see His miracles, if I want to experience His mighty presence, must I go elsewhere, to a distant country far far away where the rumors of the rumble of His voice are big and powerful?