2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
Luke 9:51-62

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Elijah and Jesus are on the final legs of their journeys,
and they have disciples in tow….
disciples who follow along without knowing the destination or, even, the way to it,
but, they are following along as faithfully as they can.

Elisha follows Elijah from Gilgal to Bethel to Jericho to the Jordan.

And at every point along the way, Elijah tells Elisha to “stay put” because the Lord has sent him further along the journey.

Elisha doesn’t know where he’s going, but he is committed to going the whole journey with Elijah wherever it leads. Continue reading →

I Kings 17:8-24

Please pray with me: Gracious God, put into my mouth the words you would have me to speak, and put into our hearts the words you would have us to hear. In your holy name we pray, Amen

In our Old Testament Lesson today, God continues to test Elijah by telling him to go and stay in Zarephath, where God had commanded a widow to feed him! Times were really hard in Zaraphath; in fact throughout the land of Israel times were really tough. They had a horrible king, Ahab, who had an equally horrible wife, Queen Jezebel, both incredibly evil and who worshipped a pagan god. They both wanted to kill Elijah for what he had done. In reality, it was because of their evil ways that everyone, everywhere was starving.

We know Elijah to be a man of great faith but he thought God had “the wrong man,” as Moses and many other great prophets did before him. Elijah was skeptical, not only because he didn’t think he had anything to offer, but because this whole plan seemed strange or problematic.

For instance:  Continue reading →