1 Kings 17:10

This was the scene that met the prophet's eye when he arrived at the place God had appointed. It was a gloomy and depressing sight to flesh and blood. But Elijah did not consult flesh and blood. The unchanging Word of the Lord held up his spirit. His confidence rested on the faithfulness of God, and he needed no help from the things around him. The horizon might look dark and heavy to human sight, but the eye of faith could see through the clouds.

A widow in Scripture stands for someone who is desolate and without resources, and it was to such a person that Elijah had to go for support. He had to learn the lesson for himself, to fit him for his later work: that when all created streams are dried up, the fullness of God stays unchanged.

When faith is simple — and it is always simple when it comes only from the Word of God — we find the right thing in the right place. He might have passed by the widow who was to support him, because she was poor, and looked for someone better off. But he kept his eye on God, and her extreme poverty did not put him off, for faith always finds confirmation in its own activity. A soul led by God always feels its way. It does not doubt its way, but at first it asks only for the least; The answer it gets then encourages it to press on to its full requirement.

He is to leave the promised land and go to a city of the Gentiles — and of all cities, one that belonged to Zidon. Zidon was the home of Baal, whose worship had ruined the land. It was also the home of wicked Jezebel, who brought in Baal worship and murdered the prophets of the Lord. Stranger still, in that foreign land the great prophet was to depend on a widow woman for his daily food. … There were "many widows" in Israel in as sad a state, but they will not suit God's plan. As always, God has Christ in view. A thousand years later, in the city of Nazareth, the Lord would need an illustration of sovereign grace. So Elijah must go to a needy widow in the guilty land of Zidon.

When the brook had dried up, Elijah was sent to Zarephath to be sustained there by a widow woman (v. 9). In Luke 4:25-26 he is sent to the widow to sustain her. God had a double purpose: to sustain His servant, and to bring a message of grace to the widow through him. … The evangelist finds his own support in bringing the good news of grace to others.

At the city gate the prophet comes face to face with the widow. To natural sight and human reason it seems impossible that this can be the widow who is to sustain him. In complete poverty, this desolate and starving woman has come to the end of her resources. … The widow does speak of the living God, but He is Elijah's God, for she says "your God," not "my God." She had no personal faith in the living God. Her hopes hung on the barrel of meal and the cruse of oil, and as they run out there is nothing ahead of her but the gates of death. God, however, has another way for the widow than death. … Zarephath means the place of the smelting furnace. Elijah passed the test of the failing brook at Cherith; now he must face the furnace of trial at Zarephath.

She had gone out of the city with no object higher or happier than the "two sticks," but she found the Lord, as it were, at the gate. There she met His prophet, and there she heard His word. How many believers are like her that day, full of their own thoughts and fears! In what they have and what they seek, self is their motive. So they rise no higher and see no further than the couple of sticks. They have not yet met the Lord at the gate. In other words, they have not yet received their commission, the service He has assigned to them here.