Elijah’s circumstances have become too much for him to bear in Chapter 19. Maybe you can relate? Is there a time in your life when the weight of the world was overpowering you? When you felt you could not go on? Maybe you are in one of those times right now. I’ve been there. There are times in our lives when hope seems to fade, the odds are stacked against us and going onward just seems irrelevant.
It is in these times that I find myself being drawn closer to God. It is the lowest of circumstances that force me to turn back to God for protection, guidance, hope ... anything I can grab ahold of in the storm. And often, it is a need for restoration brought on by me allowing life to slowly distance me from God when times are “good.”
Elijah is in that low point. The circumstances of his life have become too much to bear and, in his desperation, he asks God to take his life, he cannot go on any longer. God instead feeds him and sustains him and sends him on. Forty days later he reaches the mountain of God. It is here that the Lord will give Elijah a revelation.
When the Lord passes by, it tells us in verses 11 and 12 that there was wind that tore the mountains apart, then an earthquake, then even a fire, “but the Lord was not in the wind,” the earthquake or the fire. The Lord comes after these great and powerful events as only a gentle whisper.
We look for God in the powerful but must remember that the same God who brings fire from heaven in Chapter 18 can also come in the least powerful way, as only a whisper. Elijah comes away with a renewed spirit, ready to go on despite his circumstances (the same ones that brought him to requesting death) being unchanged.
What are you doing here? In your current circumstance, how did you get here?
Our all-powerful God can come as a whisper. Are we listening?
Nathan Rogers
Extended Scripture: 1 Kings 18–20 (NIV)
