When Your End is in Sight
So she said, “As the LORD your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar; and see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” (I Kings 17:12, NKJV)
There’s been moments in my life when I thought the end was in sight.
I remember one snowy day driving from Bismarck, ND to Sioux Falls, SD. While on the trip I experience driving through my first whiteout.
A whiteout is when the wind blows so much snow up in the air that you can’t see a thing. I was driving along on I-29 going 70-75 and suddenly out of nowhere all I could see out my widow was a blizzard of swirling snow. I remember gripping the wheel and praying, “God, our lives are in your hands.”
Later, on that same trip, we took an exit ramp to take a pit stop and that’s when I discovered that in the Dakotas, the roads can be clear but the exit ramps are another thing. When I hit my breaks we didn’t stop. As I approached the stop sign at the top of the ramp an eighteen wheeler was coming right at me. Some how I made that left turn and missed the truck and to this day I have no idea how – it truly was a miracle.
Then when I arrived to the truck stop to refuel and take a break I remember walking across the parking lot to the station and thinking that the walk was at least half-a-mile. I knew that the weather forecast warned that exposure to the subzero weather was to be less than ten minutes and I to myself, “If I stumble and fall on this snow and ice and can’t get up in time I’ll freeze to death right here.”
Sonja and I were never so happy as when we finally made it to Sioux Falls that evening and checked into our warm and safe hotel room. That was definitely a day when the end was in sight, and I’m not talking about arriving to Sioux Falls!
There’s been other times and I know you’ve got your stories too.
Like the widow in today’s Bible verses who was gathering firewood to prepare her last meal, there are those moments when, if not in reality, it sure feels like the final end is in sight.
Burdened down with life, clutching a few final resources, like a man on death row scheduled to be executed the next morning, preparing our last meal.
The end of the line.
The end of our hopes and dreams.
The end of a precious relationship.
The end of our options.
The end of our health.
The end of all things.
But God…
God has different plans.
In the case of the widow, her final few resources were exactly what God was planning to use to get her through her famine season and on into a better future.
Beauty from ashes.
Abundance from poverty.
Joy from tears.
It happens, and it can happen to you.
Down on your luck? Running on empty? Hardly anything left?
Take that wee little bit and give it God today, that’s how God creates new and better futures.
The ONE THING for today: You’re not finished until God says you’re finished. Dare to believe, dare to trust, and dare to entrust you meager strength and resources to an almighty, loving, God of abundance.
And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:19
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
