“The reward of good work is the greater work.” —from You’ll Get Through This by Max Lucado.

Too often, we want the greater work without first doing the good work - the menial, unnoticed, tedious, or unglamorous. We want to matter, to make a difference, but we wrongly assume that those who are difference-makers are the ones who are seen, who make a big splash, or who, by the world’s standards, accomplish much and are successful.

“Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him [Elijah]: ‘Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.’ So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, ‘Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?’ As she was going to get it, he called, ‘And bring me, please, a piece of bread.’”

Looking back at verse 7 we see the words stay there. Again, God gave no time frame, so Elijah obeyed the last thing God told him to do until God told him to do something else. Sometimes we think silence from God means that he has changed his mind, or that we are in the wrong place. Perhaps. However, we are just to stay and obey, like Elijah, so we are where God will use us when a need arises. Turns out, the widow and her son were starving to death.

“Some time later, the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, ‘What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?’”