I am finally getting around to some of the images on my Nikon, that I took last month. For my fellow bird enthusiasts, I have quite a few photos of the Ravens of the Grand Canyon. I laugh here, because it’s quite a joke that once you reach a certain age birds “are life”. You feed them, watch them, and you learn their names and even their calls. I am not that far gone… yet.
My camera skills are a work in progress, but the Ravens were quite beautiful in person.
More interesting to me, the Ravens were a personal conversation from God’s heart to mine. He knows I love birds, and I had two prayers regarding the wildlife on the trip we took: “Lord, please don’t let me see or encounter not even one snake, and if you want to show me something really cool through your creation, help me to be aware in the witnessing of it”.
The ravens aren’t unusual at the Grand Canyon, I entered into their environment, but seeing them was a reminder I needed. Desert seasons happen, and there is hope and communion, even there.
The story of Elijah is one of my favorites, but seeing the ravens in person gave it new life.
Elijah experienced two wilderness’s in his life. One by obeying God’s will and the other by disobeying. Both times God met him there and transformed, or reconstructed his servant. Elijah didn’t come out the same way he went in. He emerged changed.
And yeah, let me backpedal a bit. That’s right. Elijahs faithfulness got him sent to the wilderness one of those times.
I am currently in a super weird, painfully uncomfortable season. I am being called to lay a lot of things down, and sit some things out. Things I previously loved are being stripped away, rearranged, and I’m being prepared for a next I can’t even see. In many ways there is no way to go back the way I came. There is no path backwards, and I can almost see it burning behind me.
It’s a little more than disconcerting.
I am being stretched and drawn away from the safety of predictability, to sit in the silent wilderness. To lay aside every ounce of striving to figure it all out. To kill the need for control, and knowing what’s next. To trust while I learn to rest in the waiting. To live given, immediately present in this experience.
I can’t help but wonder how Elijah felt, being sent into the wild, or the questions he must have had when God told him to “eat what the ravens bring you.” It must have been so fantastically weird, and a stretch of faith.
Elijah was the first in a long line of prophets God sent to Israel and Judah. After confronting the wicked king, Ahab, Elijah was sent by God to the wilderness.
1 Kings 17: 1-4 “Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was among the settlers of Gilead,a said to Ahab, “As surely as the LORD lives—the God of Israel before whom I stand—there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word!”2Then a revelation from the LORD came to Elijah: 3“Leave here, turn eastward, and hide yourself by the Brook of Cherith, east of the Jordan.b 4And you are to drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.”
God told him to drink from the brook and to eat what the ravens brought him. RAVENS. Ironic and extremely fascinating that in a nation that was required by law to care for it’s prophets, God turned to ravens (unclean birds according to Levitical law) to care for Elijah.
When the creator of the universe could provide resources in innumerable ways, He sent a Raven to feed his prophet. What a unique and purposeful way to care for his needs! God not only LED Elijah to a dry and parched land, He provided for his basic needs in unlikely and surprising ways.
If you read on in chapter 17, when the brook runs dry God then sends Elijah to a widow to have his basic needs met.
Right as Elijah was drinking the last of the brook, a widow was gathering her meager supplies for a final meal. And God did what only he could do in their obedience to His voice.
And just like that, the wilderness became a place where Elijah could learn God’s faithfulness, and experience His unique character and provision.
While I have been in the quiet, solitary place of my wilderness, I was questioning His ways and His kindness, and He sent a raven on the rim of His magnificent creation to remind me: When I am anxious due to the unknowns of this earth, He is omnipotent. When I am feeling lost in a wilderness place, He knows where I am and sees every piece of the puzzle.
And still He is calling me to go deeper into the wild. He is asking me to eliminate the noise of the world and to cull the distractions that dull His voice. His invitation is to the secret place of quiet communion and transformation.
I have no clue where I am or where I am going, but He does, and if I lean into trust and obedience I might have the opportunity to see what the ravens will bring.
And what joy there is when I consider that like Elijah I might experience “the opportunity to be ministered to by God himself, to sit quietly by the brook absorbing God’s love. To have time to see God’s faithfulness, to learn to trust his heart.”
Oaks of Righteousness 
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