So often it comes from the most unusual people or things. You trust that it will happen, but you simply never know what, or who, is going to speak to you in a way that makes a difference. This morning, for example, it's sausages. Not just any old sausages mind you, but those tiny snack morsels Vienna Sausages.

For more than seven decades after its incorporation, the Vienna Sausage Company built a patchwork campus of buildings that made up its factory on Chicago's South Side. This growth through additional buildings created a Rube-Goldberg-esque facility. Eventually it became clear that they needed an entirely new space. The company uprooted itself from the South Side of the city and found a new home on the North Side in a single-building, state-of-the-art facility.

Employees in their new location got to work cooking up the first batches of the company's signature product. However, they weren't coming out right. They didn't have the right snap when you bit into them. Perhaps even worse the color was wrong. Their distinctive bright red sheen, was now a dull pink.

Distressed, the brass in the company went over detail after painstaking detail to try and figure out the cause of the problem. They verified that the ingredients and the cooking process were all the same. Maybe, they thought, the temperature in their smokehouse was slightly different. Or perhaps the North Side water wasn't the same as the South Side? After a year and a half of racking their brains, no one had any idea what was going wrong.

Then, one night, some of the transplanted workers were out reminiscing on their days in the old plant, when someone mentioned Irving, a former colleague who had not made the switch to the new location. There was nothing overly remarkable about Irving, but he worked hard and had known everyone because his daily routine at the plant brought him in contact with everyone at the plant. You see, his job was to take racks of sausages from the point of initial preparation to the ovens. In order to do this he had to weave his way through this hodge-podge of buildings. In all, his trip would take as long as 30 minutes, as he ventured through the warm hanging benches for the pastrami, across the floor of the plant's boiler-room, next to the tanks where they cooked the corned beef, then up an elevator, until he finally got to the smokehouse.

This new location, with its more sensible layout and fancy machinery upgrades eliminated the need to transport the sausages. Well, it turns out Irving's trip played a key role in the sausage making process. His journey gradually warmed the sausages before being cooked in the smokehouse. Irving was the secret ingredient! His excursion provided the product with the mystery factor that made it unique. The public faces of the company played their part in building the company, but in the end the person providing for this business' success was a most unlikely candidate.

Now as interesting as this tale about the unusual person behind the good fortunes of a large company might be, it is quite mundane when compared to the improbable individuals God uses to make a difference in today's reading from 1 Kings. In contrast to the climate controlled corridors of a contemporary factory, our setting today is a parched land plunged into the depths of a famine. Quite distinct from the fate of a well known snack treat our scripture story deals in matters of life and death.

Our passage this morning introduces us to a nameless widow as she is gathering firewood at the edge of town. The text gives us enough clues to know her situation is bad. It has been years since it had rained. Crops in the area are failing or have failed. Rivers and streams have dried up. Her neighbors are probably dying daily from hunger, thirst, and disease. It is entirely possible that this poor widow's husband had passed away for the same reason. One can easily picture the widow and her son, now having gone days without eating, watching that last bit of meal and oil, the only thing standing between them and starvation, dwindle. Presuming their fate had been sealed, today they were to eat the very last scrap of food and face the inevitable.

It is at this moment she encounters him. As this widow prepares to ready this final meal, up walks this fugitive. Elijah, you may recall, was eluding authorities who had it out for him because he had been telling the king to straighten up his act. While on the run, God had instructed Elijah to hide out by a brook and eat the food some ravens dropped for him. Take a moment and construct an image of this man in your minds. Unkempt; dirty and dusty, the only meat on his bones coming from the scraps left to him by a bird. Now add to this image a bit of bossiness. "Get me some water," he says. "And give me some bread while you are at it." The widow responds that she has no bread and was preparing for a final meal. Elijah jumps in and orders her to give him the first serving of this supper!

As desperate as the widow already was, one can understand if she finds this crazy looking man unlikely to help her situation. But as he stood before her she noticed something about him and the way he addressed her. Underneath his audacious demands he spoke with a sense of hope; a sense that God brought them together for a reason. So, with nowhere else to turn, she heeded his word and prepared the food as instructed. And we learn that this unseemly character brought new life to this single mother and her child as they continued to feast until rain once again nourished the soil. God provided for these two unlikely partners, the widow and the wanderer, by bringing them together so that they could provide for one another.

This famine, we know, still happens today in both the literal and figurative sense. Year after year of drought drains hope from nations on the other side of the globe. Back here in Bloomington one only needs to pay a little bit of attention to see we are not immune to a famine of a different sort. Evidence abounds in the headlines we see and read about it in the newspaper or on the internet.

The ranks of the unemployed keep growing. Patients face excruciating choices of which medical treatments to fend off for just a little longer. Employers, seeing increased demand but unsure if they can afford to expand their staff, are forced to stretch workers beyond normal limits. And from our campus setting we see stress levels for students rising. In the face of all of this, we struggle with the fact that we just do not know when things will take a turn for the better.

In spite of that uncertainty, however, we get persistently prodded with reminders that God does provide. And, as we have seen today, it may come in the most unlikely form. A business can thrive because of the actions of an unlikely character like Irving. More importantly, our lives and our outlook on the future can be shaped by the people we least expect. A poor single mother scraping together her last bits of food receives nourishment and a glimpse of hope from a haggard, disheveled man. That same man, the weary traveler with an empty stomach, can find the sustenance he needs to continue on his journey from a lowly widow, a person his society barely recognized.

And God's promise of life continues to find fruition today. Some of you may be familiar with the current ELCA tagline "God's work. Our hands." It could no doubt have been inspired by our lesson. It is a reminder not only of the source of all that is good, but also that in our time, God's hands and feet are our hands and feet. Our text today reminds us of the moments where God puts those holy appendages to use allowing God's assurance of abundant life to bubble up even in the toughest of times.

We see the promise of life emerge at Luther Springs Outdoor Ministry in Florida where sponsors make sure kids from underprivileged households can contribute to camp life, if only for a week.

We see the promise of life surface when firefighters, college students, and prison inmates join forces to protect Jamestown, North Dakota from rising flood waters.

We see the promise of life materialize at TACO, the Third Avenue Charitable Organization in San Diego California that serves food to the hungry and provides free health care for people in need in their community.

These few examples offer just a brief glimpse of occasions where God sends someone in need of help and God's people respond.

In each encounter we have, be it with the widow or the wander, the obvious or the obscure, God opens an avenue for grace to abound and hope to flourish. As God brings life to others through us, God brings life to us. It is in that regular fulfillment of God's promise of new life that we come to know that God will surely provide for all of creation.

Amen.