Often my breakfast consists of a granola bar with coffee (hey, it’s healthier than a cigarette and a cup of coffee). This light fare sends me into the day, but I’m ready for an early lunch. Not much left sticking to my ribs after a couple of hours.

Elijah enjoyed a power breakfast like you and I never see. After his confrontation with the prophets of Baal and fleeing from the evil Jezebel, Elijah lost heart. An angel woke him and fed him a cake of some sort. After repeating this cycle of sleeping and eating, Elijah went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.

What was in those cakes? Something similar to the lembas bread baked by elves in the Lord of the Rings, where one small cake kept a traveler on his feet through a full day of hard labor. Of course, lembas is make-believe (despite what you read on the internet) so no elven pastries for us.

Unexpected help came to Elijah in the form of power cakes from the hand of a celestial baker. No one had eaten this food before or has eaten it since. The Lord provided uniquely for Elijah in his time of need.

I wonder just how uniquely the Lord provides for me? Elijah needed strength and encouragement at a fearful point in his life, and the Lord brought both. You and I experience such periods as well. As we journey through them it’s good to remember the Lord provides for us in the exact ways we need at the exact times we need it.

I Kings 19 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Jonathan Farber