Have you ever felt like you just didn’t have enough? I feel it often! I don’t think I have enough time, patience, money, energy and the list could continue.
One reason God allows us to reach moments of need and even desperation is because it reminds us that we are not self-sufficient. We are dependent and our reliance is to ultimately be upon Him. These defining moments are calling us to God.
In the Bible, I Kings chapter 17 records a very moving story that involves a single parent who’s reached a point of desperation. She has so little food in the house that she and her son are planning to eat their last meal together and then die. Due to a severe famine in the land their resources had run out.
It still happens today. According to World Hunger Statistics the total number of children that die every year from hunger is 1.5 million. That’s one death every 3.6 seconds. Maybe that’s why the Bible doesn’t give us her specific name. She represents so many who face similar circumstances.
Not every story concludes with a ‘happily ever after’ ending but for this woman, it did. Her needs were provided for in a miraculous way, primarily because she was at the ‘right place at the right time.’
She hadn’t planned it. She didn’t have a long-range strategy nor did she comprehend what was about to happen. She was simply doing her best with what she had.
Have you ever been in the right place at the right time? When you are; positive things happened! Not because of your shrewd dealings or great intellect but because you happened to be positioned properly at the correct time. Eccl. 9:11 … “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. NIV
Listen: God is in the business of strategically positioning you and me in the right place at the right time. A sense of destiny is the birthright for those who choose to follow Christ. God is awfully good at getting us where He wants us to go…
But here’s the catch: The right place often seems like the wrong place and the right time often seems like the wrong time!
Is it possible for me to understate the obvious? Being a widow with a dependent child with no food and no resources is typically a bad thing. A really bad thing! Finding yourself in a famine, without food, with a child and no one to help qualifies as a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Few would see this as the right place at the right time.
As it turns out, however, it was the right place and right time for her. I admire this widow because she did what was right to do and not what was easy to do.
When you reach moments of desperation, it’s easy to forego what’s right and justify your actions on the basis of your need. When you cling to God, however, and follow His directives as this woman did, heaven can come to your aid.
Could it be that you are right now in the right place at the right time even though it may feel like the wrong place and wrong time?
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