It's like this. You're going along, minding your own business, when suddenly a messenger from God taps your shoulder. You know the tap, but you may not name the messenger as one from God because, honestly, you don't think of the voice of God coming through someone who asks, for example, "Would you make breakfast bread for the coffee hour this morning?" Yet God does use people to talk with you. Granted, there are a myriad of ways God communicates, one may in be a speeding ticket, another may be the conversation you have with a vender after you have followed a handmade sign advertising fresh, in season strawberries, just two miles down this country dirt road.

Be it a friendly Stewardship committee person, a not-so friendly police officer, or overly-friendly strawberry salesperson, sometimes the message from the familiar (or not so familiar) messenger is the gentle reminder that God does love you; other times the message has bite, like this one: "hey [insert your name here], you do have enough and, in fact, you need to give more—more time, more money, more commitment, more praise." In words now familiar to you, decide, dare, delve, devote, and dedicate yourself, your gifts, your attention, your willingness, your ear, your heart and your hope in God. Own up to being a disciple, a word and a way of life you recall from last Sunday that we will hear again and again for the next two months.

Yes, God's messengers, who are around us this morning, send both gentle reminders and reminders that bite. In our lesson today, Elijah is called to confront, not comfort. This messenger of God is charged not to settle, but to stir; and Elijah's not just talking with the Zarephath widow, he's talking to us.

To hear God's message through him, be there with this widow. We don't know this woman just as we didn't know much about Lucinda Williams in our sermon last week, although Lucinda, we remember, started the first Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, after three attempts from others failed, but we don't need to know much about this widow in scripture save this: she's a lot like each of us.

There she is, gathering sticks, and suddenly she finds herself first fetching water for a stranger and then, in this one-two punch, she finds herself preparing a meal for this outsider when both she and her son do not have a single piece of bread in the house.  

"I do not have enough," she says when she hears God's messenger in this man, "and yet you want me to give more."

"I do not have enough," you may be thinking, and the shortage may have little or nothing to do with the amount of food in your home. You could be thinking, "I do not have enough patience, I do not have enough sympathy, I do not have enough apathy, I do not have enough tolerance, I do not have enough acceptance, I do not have enough kindness...and you, God, you want me to do what? Give more?"

We can all be like this widow. We simply look at what we have, and there isn't enough. There isn't enough time to devote to the committee I'm on. There is not enough money in my wallet. There is not enough good news in my health report. There are not enough hours in the day to care for my aging parent. There's not enough heart left in my heart to reach out anymore.

And this thinking, which we all enter into, is what I call 'have not' thinking. And 'have not' thinking, which this widow displayed at first, gets us nowhere. And do you know where no where is? It's actually a place a map. No where (which you can now set your GPS to find), is you alone. While we welcome peace and solitude, and we need peace and solitude, no where, that place on the map that puts us in a favorite living room chair, is a dour place. No where is a walled-off place with no light and no life. No where is the place you may have experienced for a time, and you know if you are there because in this place you have no options, no joy, no motivation, no companionship, and no hope.

There's an important lesson in this scripture, which also happens to be our first sermon point this morning. It's this. Through this 'have not' thinking which we can all revert back to from time to time, God provides. We simply have to be his hands. God provides. We simply have to be his hands.

Recall the end of last week's sermon. I talked about a statue in a French town of Jesus with outstretched hands stood along the French countryside. During a battle in World War I, both of the statue's hands were destroyed by artillery. When the smoke cleared for enough realization to be seen, a plaque went up beneath the disfigured Jesus with these words: "Christ has no hands but your hands." This is true. Our Savior provides when we are his hands for others and for ourselves.

I also shared at the end of last Sunday's sermon that we'd be moving into a new 'D' word, discipleship. With a blessing on the hands of those here, we are called through prophets like Elijah to be the hands of Christ. In other words, as Disciples of Christ, we are to go about his work.

To do so, we first have to realize what we have. To realize what we have, we have to disengage or unplug any of this 'have not' thinking that I mentioned a moment ago. You have enough. And you have enough because God provides.

The opposite of enough may well be empty, and this widow woman, incredibly low on the economic totem pole, had only a handful of flour and just a little cooking oil. Her 'have not' thinking left her in dire straits, as your 'have not' thinking can leave you in dire straits, but God provides.

How? Elijah didn't hand this poor woman a gift certificate to the Weis Market in Clarks Summit; he didn't come wheeling in with bags and bags of groceries from Price Chopper or Rob's Country Market up there in Montrose, and say, "Here you go!" No, he told her to face her emptiness, and, in so doing, find what she needed. And what she needed was to realize that she did have enough, just as you need to realize you do have enough. No, you have more than enough.

Think about what God accomplished through Elijah, specifically with the amount of food that was to be had for days and days on end. God can accomplish as much with you because when you unplug your 'have not' attitude and become the hands of God, when you hear God using people or situations to talk to you, then you know (or you will know) what Elijah knew in his day and I know in mine. It is this. God provides.

Become God's hands. That was point one. Now here's our second point this morning. With God's hands, feed those who are hungry around you. Feed those who are hungry around you.

Respond literally, yes. Many support the food pantry here in our church, and our ministry has been present in serving those in Scranton who truly need a meal in their stomach. Continue this ministry.

Also realize there is more than one way to be hungry.

This Zarephath widow saw firsthand the blessings of God. The food she had, which seemed so insufficient at the time, was enough to feed Elijah, who may have had an appetite like a few of our star Harford baseball team players. She also had more than enough for herself and her son. She knew of God's generosity as we know of God's generosity in our lives. As you can do, she saw and named the gift.

Yet even so, even though she could name that God had blessed her, even though she knew God would not abandon her at any time of her need, she turned and did what when her son became sick and died? She bit back. Read with me what she said to Elijah in verse eighteen. Then she said to Elijah ,"O man of God, what have you done to me? Have you come here to point out my sins and kill my son?"

I talked about baseball a moment ago. I also know I have a wrestling fan or two here this morning and what she did verbally was smack him down faster and harder than some pile-driver. "What have you done?" She snapped to Elijah. "Even though I know of the gift of God (and here she means the ongoing supply of food), you, man of God, let this happen. How dare you! Even though I know God has helped me through a rough time in my life—bad health, bad bills, a painful loss, unemployment, an ugly divorce, a love life in the waste paper basket, a friend who dumped me—even though I know God has walked with me every step of the way—I still hold and respond to my tried and true, never-far-from-the-back-of-my-mind 'have not' thinking, and I am mad.

"What," she growled, "have you done to me?"

What God has done to her is what God does to us—he makes us aware that he's always with us. That is our third and final point this morning. God makes us aware that He is with us always.

Get back to where we started. Messengers are all around us. Sometimes the messages are sweet, uplifting or even funny words like you find on bumper stickers like these four: one, He died for me, I live for him, two, I'm the wretch the song refers to, three, God spoke and bang, it happened, and four, Ah, you follow Jesus this closely?

Other messages have more bite. Jesus himself walked through trying times with some of messages he received from his Father. He cried out to heaven, and he had what you, disciple, can have, and that's this rock-solid, never wavering, never faltering relationship with the one who loved you there in your mother's womb.

God sends messages. To hear them, be close to him. Love him. Reflect him in what you say and in what you do.

Yes, God does send messages. Through Elijah we learn that God provides. We simply have to be His hands. That's point one. Secondly, with God, there is always enough. There is always enough because God, here in point three, makes us aware through our needs and in being present to the needs of others that He is with us always. When we listen to God, and then act with God, we are never alone.

Remember how our sermon starts because it begins to close in the same way.

It is like this. You're going along, minding your own business, when suddenly a messenger from God—be in a Stewardship member, a cop, someone selling fresh strawberry preserves or someone much like Elijah—taps your shoulder.

Respond to those messages by following Jesus more closely as a disciple. More about being a disciple will come next week and through this month and the next. You will also hear more of how the words ring true for your discipleship when you decide, dare, delve, devote, and dedicate yourself to what's in your pantry, which is enough flour and oil, and with what's in your heart, and what is in your heart is the fact that God did then what God does now, and that's bring life from death in you and in others.