A couple of years ago, after reading 1 Kings 17, God gave me an unforgettable insight . . . 

In 1 Kings 17, God tells Elijah to go and hide himself by the brook Cherith. Once there, he drinks from the brook and is fed by ravens . . . which God commanded to feed him! Elijah obeys God, but then the brook dries up. 

In the same chapter, I also read about a widow and her son. The widow has no bread, only a handful of flour and a little oil. She plans on preparing a final meal with her meager remaining supplies, believing she and her son would soon die. A while later, the son becomes sick and dies. 

After pondering chapter 17, God gave me the following insight: Not all hard circumstances mean the end of the story. For example, in 1 Kings 17, a dried-up brook, a lack of bread, and a widow’s dead son were not the end of the story. For God moved Elijah to another location and miraculously provided for him there. God multiplied the widow’s flour and oil, saving her and her son. Later, when the son got sick and died, God raised him to life. 

Yes, not all hard circumstances mean the end of the story. Which reminds me of the time a former nurse of mine shared the following. Years prior, on the day of my discharge from the hospital after a three week stay following stage-four ovarian cancer surgery, she and my other nurses believed that they were sending me home to die. But as it turned out, that was not the end of my story. Praise God! Almost 32 years later, I am still alive. 

While my nurses and others saw what they assumed would be the end of my story back then, I was praying and believing God for the impossible: the healing of stage-four ovarian cancer. And God, in His mercy, answered that God-sized prayer. 

After I decided to write this story, I happened to read a ministry letter about a family. All former slaves of a brick kiln, they had believed their lives would end at the brick kiln. But as it turned out, slavery was not the end of their story. Rescue and freedom were theirs, instead.

So when hard circumstances come calling in our lives, may we not immediately assume that means the end of our story. For it just might mean a new beginning, a new life, freedom, or the start of something we never would have imagined. All because our God is all-powerful and sovereign, even over devastating circumstances. Only He knows our stories from beginning to end—the real end, not our imagined ones.