「過了些日子，溪水乾了，因為那地沒有下雨。」－列王記上17:7
生命中事物的幻化無常，常能幫助屬靈生命的建立。
讓以利亞長久駐留思想的基立溪，真實描繪出我們生命的寫照：「過了些日子，溪水乾了」，這是你我生命經歷的過去和未來。
終究，我們會了解信靠「恩賜」和信靠「賜恩者」的差別。擁有「恩賜」也許能使你一時左右逢源，然而擁有「賜恩者」卻使你得享永遠的愛。
對以利亞來說，基立溪的經歷實在是個夢靨，直等到他到了撒勒法，他才重見天日。
神嚴厲的對付不會是祂最終的手段，生命中的痛楚、荒廢和眼淚也不會成為殘局，他們不過是引到美好結局的間奏曲。
若神越過基立溪，直接帶以利亞到撒勒法，他就要失去一個成為更智慧的先知，和更好之人的機會。
基利溪旁的以利亞，乃是在經歷信心的生活。當有日我們屬地的泉源被斷絕了，外在的資源散盡了，我們就要清楚知道，我們的盼望和幫助，都來自創造天地的神。
－邁爾
"It came to pass . . . that the brook dried up" (1 Kings 17:7).The education of our faith is incomplete if we have not learned that there is a providence of loss, a ministry of failing and of fading things, a gift of emptiness. The material insecurities of life make for its spiritual establishment. The dwindling stream by which Elijah sat and mused is a true picture of the life of each of us. "It came to pass . . . that the brook dried up"--that is the history of our yesterday, and a prophecy of our morrows.
In some way or other we will have to learn the difference between trusting in the gift and trusting in the Giver. The gift may be good for a while, but the Giver is the Eternal Love.
Cherith was a difficult problem to Elijah until he got to Zarephath, and then it was all as clear as daylight. God's hard words are never His last words. The woe and the waste and the tears of life belong to the interlude and not to the finale.
Had Elijah been led straight to Zarephath he would have missed something that helped to make him a wiser prophet and a better man. He lived by faith at Cherith. And whensoever in your life and mine some spring of earthly and outward resource has dried up, it has been that we might learn that our hope and help are in God who made Heaven and earth. --F. B. Meyer
