Streams In The Desert Reading PlanSýnishorn

DAY 4

Week after week, with an unwavering and steadfast spirit, Elijah watched the brook dwindle and finally dry up. Often tempted to stumble in unbelief, he nevertheless refused to allow his circumstances to come between himself and God. Unbelief looks at God through the circumstances, just as we often see the sun dimmed by clouds or smoke. But faith puts God between itself and its circumstances and looks at them through him.

Elijah’s brook dwindled to only a silver thread, which formed pools at the base of the largest rocks. Then the pools evaporated, the birds flew away and the wild animals of the fields and forests no longer came to drink, for the brook became completely dry. And only then, to Elijah’s patient and faithful spirit, did the word of the Lord come and say, “Go at once to Zarephath.” (1 Kings 17:9).

Most of us would have become anxious and tired and would have made other plans long before God spoke. Our singing would have stopped as soon as the stream flowed less musically over its rocky bed. We would have hung our harps on the willows nearby and begun pacing back and forth on the withering grass, worrying about our predicament. And probably, long before the brook actually dried up, we would have devised some plan, asked God to bless it, and headed elsewhere.

God will often extricate us from the mess we have made, because “his love endures forever” (1 Chronicles 16:34). Yet if we had only been patient and waited to see the unfolding of his plan, we would never have found ourselves in such an impossible maze, seeing no way out. We would also never have had to turn back and retrace our way, with wasted steps and so many tears of shame.

“Wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:14 [emphasis added]). Patiently wait!

F. B. Meyer