My phone has an application (Google Goggles) where I look at the screen and it shows me what the camera can see; like video camera. Except the phone knows where I am (through sat nav) and which way I am looking (through a compass inside the phone), the application then puts extra information on screen i.e. the direction of the nearest pub or information about the building I am looking at.

I read the story from this week's Lectio and wonder what my response would have been. There is no way I would put my needs before those of a widow and her son, especially if it means taking their last meal from them.

Except that is not how Elijah saw the situation, he did not see himself putting his needs before anyone because he was seeing the scene with some extra information added; God information (God Goggles) - how He was going to supply for all of them.

In the second situation from this story the widow's son dies and she lays the blame firmly at the door of Elijah; everything in me would have wanted to turn and run away...

Elijah didn't, rather he went to God in desperate prayer asking a very deep question "Why have you killed her son?" This is full of difficult things to get our heads around i.e. did God kill the son and if so what does that say about God?

This passage does not give us any answers except that God listened to Elijah's plea for the boy's life and he came alive again.

The challenge is how to see life through "God Goggles" even when things seem contrary to His character.

By Andy