Enjoy the Birds

The same God we try to make so predictable is the same God who chose to do very strange things in the OT. If you read the story of Elijah, God chooses to provide food for him through the use of ravens. Ravens. Birds who eat dead things, birds who scavenge for food, you know, the same birds that would have been FORBIDDEN by the law to touch or a Jewish person would become unclean. That bird...a raven. This was God's choice in taking care of His prophet in the wilderness. Can you imagine what Elijah was thinking? A servant doing God's work as a Prophet is coming in contact with an unclean bird, continuously. I'm not sure it was so easy for him to eat the bread that these birds were bringing. It would have only been more strange if the ravens were bringing little bits of pork for him to eat!

What is God thinking? This would have been really disturbing for Elijah in the midst of an already disturbing story line. Being a prophet was a very difficult position, especially when the message was about judgement. Elijah spent an undisclosed amount of time in Kerith Ravine where the Bible says that he was fed bread and meat in the morning and in the evening. BY RAVENS! Days and days or weeks of this happening over and over again. I would think at some point Elijah might have cringed at the sound of flapping wings.

At times our stories are like Elijah's story. Filled with fragments of wounds, loss, pain and confusion, it can be very disturbing the way God might help us through these hard parts of our stories. In fact, it can be disturbing to think that God allows pain into our lives in order to call us to the deeper places He has for us. The problem is, just like Elijah, many of us are called to walk into these places alone. It seems as we move towards the painful parts of our stories we are surrounded by others who seem to not get it. People live the whole lives seemingly undisturbed about their stories and undisturbed by what they are being called to live out. But others have lives who are wrought with painful memories and an invitation from Him to walk into those places.

An example is that many of my clients have lived through trauma. As I walk with these amazing people who have survived trauma, one thing is very clear. To allow their story to be true is hard, to allow someone to walk with them into that story, very hard. But to allow someone to really love them in the midst of their traumatic stories, nearly impossible. Coming out of a traumatic environment many of these courageous people have survived believing that they were deserving of the abuse and unlovable. And this is the very thing that God uses to breath life back into their lives, love. To truly allow someone to love them feels disturbing to their hearts, much like eating unclean meat from an unclean bird must have felt to Elijah. God continually looks to provide for us in ways that cause our hearts to be disturbed. And only through those disturbing ways are we able to only say "this has GOT to be God".

Is God feeding you with ravens? Enjoy the birds my friend, enjoy the birds!