Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about the first winter she and her family spent on the prairie of South Dakota. The crops had been sparse that fall because the sod was still stiff in the ground and prairie grasses were hard to root up to form nicely plowed fields. The winter was predicted to be a harsh one so many people moved off their land claims and in to the small town that had grown up in just a few months. Laura and her family moved into one of the shop buildings on Main Street and set up housekeeping for the winter.

The townspeople were still very dependent upon supplies from the east including food and fuel to burn. They were expecting the next train to bring in many supplies they would need for the winter: coal, flour, cornmeal, meat, and the like. However, before the train could arrive a blizzard struck and for three days no one could leave their house. The train was stuck on the tracks.

After three days, the blizzard cleared up and the men went to work clearing the train tracks of the accumulated snow. They worked for two days and finally got word that the train would run the following day. In the night the winds kicked up again and another blizzard slammed into the town covering the train tracks again.

Blizzard after blizzard hit that hard winter. Sometimes there were two days between them. Sometimes only an afternoon separated the storms. Word went out that there would be no more trains coming in until the spring. As the word spread, the people in town expressed their worry about the meager supplies they had to get them through the winter. The shelves in the stores, which would normally be brimming with food, were empty and the barrels that normally held choice pieces of salt pork held just an inch of brine in the bottom. All of the coal was sold out and lumber prices were at an all-time high.

With no coal to burn and the price of lumber well out of reach Laura and her family had to resort to using twisted clumps of hay to fuel their cook stove and warm their house. People began rationing their food in hopes that it would be enough to last. Laura and her family got to the point where they were grinding up wheat kernels that had been saved to plant the next year’s harvest. They didn’t have anything to grind the wheat with except a small coffee grinder. So hour after hour they would turn the crank of the coffee grinder just to get enough wheat to make a meager meal of rough brown bread and boiled potatoes.

When a rumor spread around town that one of the settlers twenty miles from town had a lot of wheat he was saving for planting next year, the townspeople’s mouths watered. That wheat could be the difference between life and death. Two brave young men went and bought as much of the wheat off the settler as he would sell. When they returned to town the people rationed the wheat out so that everyone would have enough to survive the winter.

That winter wasn’t about having great feasts or even large meals. It was merely about getting enough food to simply live another day.

The woman that Elijah encountered searching for sticks was merely trying to survive the massive drought that had come across the land. Her meager supplies of food, even with her careful rationing had pretty much run out. Her meals were not fancy either. They were just simple fare intended to allow her and her son to live another day.

That morning, she had looked in the jar where she kept her flour and the jug where she kept her oil and saw that today would be the last day she could cook anything for herself and her son. Today the rations would run out.

Elijah, who was very aware of the conditions of the drought-stricken land, must have seemed either clueless or rude when he asked this woman for a drink of water in this parched land. But God had promised Elijah that a widow would provide for him. Elijah saw a promise for survival in the widow as she collected her sticks.

The woman is willing to oblige the prophet in his request for water and is headed to draw some water for him when he calls out asking for food as well. The woman explains her predicament – how there is only enough meal and oil for today’s meal for herself and her son. That’s when Elijah makes a bold statement, "Do not be afraid."

"Do not be afraid." This is a frequent phrase throughout scripture. We first hear it spoken by God to Hagar. Hagar had come to the end of her rope and without any water to give her son she lays him under a tree and waits for death to come. But instead of death, the voice of God calls to her, "do not be afraid." And God shows her a well full of life-giving water.

"Do not be afraid" is what Joseph said to his brothers in Egypt when they spoke of finding money in the sacks of meal they had bought from him. In another time of famine, Joseph told his brothers, "God has provided for you."

After telling her not to be afraid, Elijah promises, "the jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth." The chance to live is offered to the woman and her son. If she will feed this prophet of the Lord first, then she and her son will have the chance to live. What Elijah is offering her is nothing less than life itself. Life in the form of simple cakes of bread made with a little oil and a little flour. A little bread on which to live.

This whole drought had come about really over the question of life and who has the power of life. The king of Israel at the time was Ahab. Ahab was not one of the good kings of Israel. I’m betting you’ve heard of his wife, even if you haven’t heard of him. He married a woman by the name of Jezebel. Jezebel was not from Israel and she did not worship the God Israel worshipped. Instead she worshipped Baal. In order to appease his wife, Ahab allowed Baal to be worshipped in Israel. He even constructed special places of worship dedicated to Baal.

All of this Baal worship did not sit well with God. So Elijah from out of the blue, on behalf of God, challenged Baal to a duel of sorts. Baal’s field of specialty was supposed to be fertility of the land. So Baal was credited with making it rain and the crops grow. So Elijah told Ahab that God was going to stop the rain and if Baal was so powerful, he could just go ahead and make it rain. Well the rain stopped and the crops didn’t grow and needless to say, Jezebel was none too happy about seeing her god challenged and defeated like that. But we will talk more about her reaction over the next few weeks.

So this whole drought came about because of the question of who has the power of life. The rains have stopped, just as Elijah had said they would and the widow and her son’s lives are at risk. And Elijah speaks again a word about who has the power of life. Through Elijah, God tells the widow that the opportunity to live rests on trusting in God to provide a jar of meal and a jug of oil that will not run out.

Zarephath was in a region that primarily worshipped Baal. So here was God sending the prophet Elijah essentially to Baal’s home region and providing life for him there. God can even provide for life on Baal’s "home turf."

The question of who has the power of life comes up again when the widow’s son becomes deathly ill. So ill that he has stopped breathing. Elijah prays to God, asking that God will restore life. The question is answered again. God has the power of life.

The widow, upon seeing her son restored to life, hears the truth of Elijah’s words. God provided for herself and her son through the miracle of the jar of meal and jug of oil that did not run out. God had provided life in a time of famine. God had provided for her son life when there was no breath left in him. God had provided life in a land struggling on the edge of death.

We have all probably heard stories of areas where crops have failed and people have gone hungry. We have seen the news stories about the struggles that war-torn nations go through in order to feed the hungry mouths.

We don’t hear very many stories about bags of flour not running out or food that lasts longer than it logically should. Perhaps we don’t hear the stories of life very much. Shane Claiborne tells the story of working in a clinic in a very poor region of the world. This clinic lacked many of the most basic medical supplies. One day they ran out of everything – everything except for a bottle of Pepto-Bismal. People would come into the clinic with a broken leg and were given Pepto-Bismal. They would come in with a fever and were given a small dose of the pink liquid. All day people kept coming in and they kept pouring out the pink liquid and it didn’t run out. The jar didn’t go dry. But that wasn’t all that happened – people were getting healed on Pepto-Bismal. It wasn’t because that pink liquid has some undiscovered medicinal value but there was something else going on there. God was at work. Life was at work.

This story of Elijah comes from a time of drought and famine. Even now when the rains come sweeping in at night, we are in the midst of a famine. When I look around me, I see people who are hungry. Most of these people have flour and oil in their pantry but still they are hungry. Their hunger is not for something to put in their stomachs. The hunger is a hunger for life.

You’ve probably seen that look. You’ve probably had that look yourself at one time or another. That look of just trudging through the day, moving from one task to another until it was time to crash into bed at night only to get up again in the morning and do it all over again. There’s a hunger there. There’s a question of life going on there.

Then ever so often, we gather together here. We gather together and in a sip of liquid and a morsel of bread we taste life. And as that bread hits our tongue and as that liquid runs down our throats, we get a hint of life.

The widow probably didn’t know what all she was getting herself into when she brought that first bit of bread to the bedraggled looking man. But by the end of their time together, she was able to say, "Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth."

We never know what we’re going to get when we dare to host God’s prophetic word. We might be called to proclaim life in the midst of famine or life in the midst of death. But no matter the details or the when or the how, life is what we proclaim. Do not be afraid because we know the answer to the question, "Who has the power of life?"