Resting at Cherith

I wrote this recently as part of an update on my husband's health for our friends and family, and want to re-post it here in case it speaks to anyone else who is "resting at Cherith" right now.

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Back in 1 Kings Elijah hides himself by the brook Cherith.  This story is in 1 Kings 17, and occurs after Elijah tells evil King Ahab that there will be a drought. God directs Elijah to go hide out by Cherith for a while, and God provides bread, meat and water.  And then, due to the drought, the brook dries up.  Elijah journeys on, at the command of God, to Zarephath.

In my devotional earlier this month I read this:

"The education of our faith is incomplete if we have not learned that there is a providence of loss, a ministry of failing and of fading things, a gift of emptiness....The dwindling stream by which Elijah sat and mused is a true picture of the life of each of us. 'It came to pass...that the brook dried up'--that is the history of our yesterday, and a prophecy of our morrows.

"In some way or other we will have to learn the difference between trusting in the gift and trusting in the Giver. The gift may be good for a while, but the Giver is the eternal love.

"Cherith was a difficult problem to Elijah until he got to Zarephath, and then it was all as clear as daylight.  God's hard words are never his last words.  The woe and the waste and the tears of life belong to the interlude and not to the finale. 

"Had Elijah been led straight to Zarephath he would have missed something that helped to make him a wiser prophet and a better man.  He lived by faith at Cherith.  And whensoever in your life and mine some spring of earthly and outward resource has dried up, it has been that we might learn that our hope and help are in God who made heaven and earth."

--F.B. Meyer, quoted in Streams in the Desert (October 5)(emphasis mine)

I type this, even now, having read it so many times, with tears in my eyes.

I have to trust in God, not in the gifts He gives me. These gifts are lovely and can be good--material things, earthly relationships, good health, etc. but they are the gifts, and "in some way or other" I have to learn the difference between trusting in the gift and trusting in the Giver. It brings tears to my eyes because it is so true! I have to live by faith, believing that "all things work together for good to them that love God." (Romans 8:28)  I have seen this over and over again, not just this year, but over the course of four decades of life.

Right now we rest at Cherith.  We aren't relying on ravens to bring us bread and meat, like Elijah was, and we are materially bursting at the seams (as most Americans are), with more than sufficient food and shelter and clothing.  But I still feel we are living by faith right now.  There are many, many unknowns.  When will my husband be able to eat again? Speak clearly? Taste sweet things? Taste anything? Sleep more than a couple hours at a time? Run? Work? 

And then the bigger looming issue: did it work? Did the three months of surgery, radiation, and chemo do what they were supposed to do?

These are all unanswerable questions right now.  We just have to wait and see.  Like Elijah, we are biding our time here, trusting that this whole situation is unfolding as it should.  I want the gifts very badly (the ability to speak, eat, and sleep--such simple gifts; and complete healing, restoration, renewed health--the bigger gifts). But I truly want to trust the Giver in this process. 

So we rest, we wait, and we trust that God is doing a bigger work here than we can imagine right now. This is our Cherith. And our hope and help are found in God alone.