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Today's Devotional

Read 1 Kings 17:1-16.

What marvelous “coincidences” are prepared by Providential grace! The poor widow is unconsciously ordained to entertain the prophet! The ravens will be guided to the brook Cherith! “I have commanded them to feed you there.” Our road is full of surprises. We see the frowning, precipitous hill, and we fear it, but when we arrive at its base we find a refreshing spring! The Lord of the way had gone before the pilgrim. “I go to prepare ... for you.”

But how strange that a widow with only “a handful of meal” should be “commanded” to offer hospitality! It is once again “the impossible” which is set before us. It would have been a dull commonplace to have fed the prophet from the overflowing larder of a rich man’s palace. But to work from an almost empty cupboard! That is the surprising way of the Lord. He delights to hang great weights on apparently slender wires, to have great events turn on seeming trifles, and to make poverty the minister of “the indescribable riches of Christ.”

The poor widow sacrificed her “handful of meal,” and received an unfailing supply. And this, too, is the way of the Lord.

Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee,
Repaid a thousand fold will be.

About the author and the source

John Henry Jowett (1864–1923) a famed pastor and author, served congregations in both England and the United States. He believed the gospel was the only hope for our times. Crime dropped remarkably when he pastored in Birmingham, England.