Word for the Week: A God for All Seasons
What are you doing here, Elijah?
1 Kings 19:9, 13
It is, of course, impossible for us to make a clinical diagnosis of Elijah’s collapse after the triumph on Mount Carmel. His depression and despair can perhaps be seen as symptoms of what we might (without clinical precision) describe as burn-out or breakdown. Nor can we necessarily extrapolate from the Elijah narrative any general principles about what should happen in the life of any of us today.
What we can do, however, is observe how God responded to Elijah’s breakdown. What kind of God is he?
No reproach passed God’s lips, as his angel gently touched Elijah, fed him and left him to rest. The second time, however, the angel came to nourish Elijah for a journey – a journey that took him further away from the place of his first calling, but led him eventually to a new encounter with God. But first, the Lord’s word came to him: ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’
So Elijah had the opportunity to share what was in his heart – fear and isolation. The source of the fear was clear enough: Jezebel was on the warpath. But the isolation was to some extent illusory, for, as the Lord told Elijah later, there were seven thousand other people in Israel ‘whose knees had not bowed down to Baal’ (19:18).
But perhaps what Elijah longed for most of all was an assurance of God’s presence. And this is what the Lord offered him. Elijah’s previous experience of God appears to have been unambiguous: a clear word or a demonstration of power. But in the tempest that followed God was not to be found. Rather, Elijah finally recognised him in something so undramatic that it might be described as little more than the absence of absence, variously translated as ‘a gentle whisper’, ‘a still small voice’ or even ‘a sound of sheer silence’.
Although Elijah’s misgivings were not immediately allayed, the Lord now encouraged him by giving him further things to do, and a helper so that he would no longer be alone.
What kind of God is he? Understanding, patient, encouraging; but also mighty and sovereign. A God for all seasons, for all people.
Helen Parry
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