Elijah had just been sentenced to death by Jezebel, the corrupt queen of a weak king. She had recently, wickedly, wielded her husband's power to slaughter one hundred of Elijah's fellow prophets. And because Elijah had publicly undermined her power in favor of God's, she vowed that her most vehement objective was his execution. Elijah's heart dropped and just as swiftly, his feet fled. And continued to flee until Elijah was a whole day's journey into the wilderness. Once he reached a place of absolute seclusion, Elijah came to rest under a juniper tree; and with him, his soul-suppressing fear and dejection.
Alone at the base of the tree, the prophet cried out: "It is enough! Now, Lord take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!" Elijah was overwhelmed to the point of surrender. A very natural response to a very human tribulation: fear, failure, dejection. Elijah's woe sculpted an imprint at the base of that juniper tree for you to sit in. At some point in your life you will need to sit in that spot and you should, because from that spot God rehabilitated His beloved child; He is equally able to rehabilitate you.
Elijah's breakdown under the juniper tree is an illustration of God's receptive and attentive, gentle and empathetic nature. Yet the most salient point of the prophet's breakdown is God's subsequent ability to engineer the restoration of a broken spirit.
- Spiritual solitude carves the space necessary for recuperation.
Elijah knew that he needed to more than just hide from Jezebel. Before he settled under the juniper tree in the wilderness, he had reached safety: a different city, and he had arrived there with a friend. But neither safety nor friendship could settle him, never mind restore the tumult of his soul. To be healed of an afflicted soul, he had to find spiritual solitude.
He rested on the ground of the tree and slept. He needed rest, and in that quiet place, boisterous only with the delicate twitter of nature, an angel touched him. The angel carried and delivered to Elijah a directive from God: arise and eat. Still despondent, Elijah surveyed the baked bread and the cruse of water and then complied. He ate and drank and rested.
God wants you to do more than simply hide from fear or enemies. He wants to tend to your wounds; He wants to assign an angel to to deliver provision and to minister to your needs. In order to do that, He needs you to journey into a place where such ministrations can be delivered. A place of spiritual solitude, literal for Elijah and perhaps for you too, but figuratively as well. Exclusively two things must you permit entrance to your soul: the bread of life and the living water. You need to submit yourself to God's word and will and submerse yourself in His love and promises.
The baked bread that Elijah ate was more than a meal, more than a symbol. The bread was the bread of life, sustenance sourced from God. Elijah consumed the provision of God, the only organic substance specific and adequate enough to revive the soul. Elijah allowed the angel not to administer bread but to minister to him the encouragement, the purpose, the plan and protection of God. Elijah guzzled the living water that quenched and revived the spirit in him that had grown parched in the oppressive heat of the world. Elijah submerged himself in God's solemnity, it poured back into his life and doused the fires that had burned him nearly to ash.
God's solemnity will form a barrier between you and the chaos, you and the fear, you and the source of your torment. To have that barrier, to disallow the noise and chaos to permeate and frazzle your state of mind, you need to delve into spiritual solitude. You must allow God to minister to you through scripture, through quiet contemplate and trust in His authority over all forces in your life. Like Elijah, you need to rest and you need to know that redemptive rest comes through absolute reliance on God and the severing of all else.
- Identification of the cause and expression of the effects, outlines a response of restorative course of action.
The second time the angel returned to Elijah he added: for the journey is too great for you. God needed Elijah to be in a state of redemptive rest before He could present Elijah with the opportunity to rage. Outside of that state of God ordained peace, the anger and the fear would have consumed Elijah. His lament would have echoed and reverberated off of every broken place within him and around him. But restored to God, his lament was caught and heard and sheltered.
It was a process. The process of a lifetime, but concentrated with concentrated effort over a forty-day journey. It was not geographical, it was spiritual. While Elijah's body exerted physical effort, his mind exerted spiritual effort: the journey provided time for the struggle in his soul. He had prepared and practiced. He had been brave and righteous. He had confronted his enemies... and failed. The courage he relied on weakened under the strain of his enemy's might. Finally God asked Elijah: why are you here? In effect, God wanted to know how Elijah had gotten to that place. Not the cave, but the deep dispirited valley of his soul.
God knew the intimate details of Elijah's plight but allowed Elijah the opportunity to speak, to describe it for himself. To articulate and thus identify core of his dejection. This was nothing short of the expression of a of raw, honest prayer. God invited Elijah, and he invites you, to present to knot to Him. And once you have, He says: Let's unravel it together. We say: this is my problem, and God answers: this is My plan for it.
A torrent of honesty gushed out of Elijah. Elijah's problems were not his fault. His failure was actually success; he had planted the seeds God gave him to plant, it was not his fault that they did not yield. Yet even if Elijah had caused his own problems, even if Elijah failed to follow God's directives, from this place of honesty and submission, God would have rehabilitated him. Just as He will rehabilitate you, regardless of your guilt or innocence, your success or failure.
Be honest in the prayerful vocalization of your anger, fear and pain. God listens patiently, and answers constructively. He always provides you the opportunity speak for yourself, to explain for yourself, to express what rages within you. Allow God to lead you into a private place, even if that private place is the recess of your own mind, upheld only by the pillars of God's strength. Because in that private place, everyone else's opinion is silenced; every noise the world, the fear, the pain, the anger, the enemy makes is unable to disturb you. In that private place you have the microphone and the audience of God.
And then you switch positions.
It was a process. The process of a lifetime, but concentrated with concentrated effort over a forty-day journey. It was not geographical, it was spiritual. While Elijah's body exerted physical effort, his mind exerted spiritual effort: the journey provided time for the struggle in his soul. He had prepared and practiced. He had been brave and righteous. He had confronted his enemies... and failed. The courage he relied on weakened under the strain of his enemy's might. Finally God asked Elijah: why are you here? In effect, God wanted to know how Elijah had gotten to that place. Not the cave, but the deep dispirited valley of his soul.
God knew the intimate details of Elijah's plight but allowed Elijah the opportunity to speak, to describe it for himself. To articulate and thus identify core of his dejection. This was nothing short of the expression of a of raw, honest prayer. God invited Elijah, and he invites you, to present to knot to Him. And once you have, He says: Let's unravel it together. We say: this is my problem, and God answers: this is My plan for it.
A torrent of honesty gushed out of Elijah. Elijah's problems were not his fault. His failure was actually success; he had planted the seeds God gave him to plant, it was not his fault that they did not yield. Yet even if Elijah had caused his own problems, even if Elijah failed to follow God's directives, from this place of honesty and submission, God would have rehabilitated him. Just as He will rehabilitate you, regardless of your guilt or innocence, your success or failure.
Be honest in the prayerful vocalization of your anger, fear and pain. God listens patiently, and answers constructively. He always provides you the opportunity speak for yourself, to explain for yourself, to express what rages within you. Allow God to lead you into a private place, even if that private place is the recess of your own mind, upheld only by the pillars of God's strength. Because in that private place, everyone else's opinion is silenced; every noise the world, the fear, the pain, the anger, the enemy makes is unable to disturb you. In that private place you have the microphone and the audience of God.
And then you switch positions.
- The chaotic noise with-out attempts to mute the steady quiet within.
After your exposition begins God's presentation. God will present the crack in your foundation, the fissure in your resolve and then He will demonstrate how to re-secure it, and how to re-establish your spiritual resolve.
Elijah experienced an epic demonstration, complete with earthquakes and fire and destructive winds. While Elijah crouched in the cave, his cloak wrapped over his face and body, God sent the wind. God make the earth quake. God set the earth on fire.
But God was not in the wind. God was not in the earthquake. God was not in the fire. God wanted Elijah to realize that no matter what noise or tizzy the earth or person or emotion makes, none of it has the power of God within it. Therefore of none of it should he be afraid. After the earthquake, the wind and fire, there was something: a still, small voice. The gentle, steady whisper of God.
God demonstrated such an epic display in order to familiarize Elijah with the quiet power of God. The power so immutable, so unmatched that it does not need to stir up wind, or waves or quakes to completely restructure any atmosphere or any terrain. God wanted Elijah to realize the difference between the power people and fear hold in the world versus the power God holds over the world.
Similarly God needs you to be able to distinguish His voice from the rest; because if it's not God, it's not relevant. Elijah fractured because he paid too much attention to the noise of the world that he neglected to listen for the voice of God. God is a quiet power; with a silent tug He can topple any man, fear or nation. By an inaudible tweak He can reverse situations, return losses, restore spirits.
Elijah had to learn to sense God's presence amid, beneath, and over the noise. He had to learn to root himself in the spiritual security God provides otherwise he would continue to be plucked up and tossed about by anything and anyone. Elijah learned to listen and then God performed his final demonstration: He listened too. Elijah's fear and tribulations were valid, he was justifiably overwhelmed. God heard his plea and answered it. He reassigned Elijah to a new position, and handed him a fresh purpose to accomplish while God prepared the inevitable destruction of his enemies.
As children of God, our lives are bookend-ed by His promises and by the fulfillment of His promises. The life in between is a spiritual journey of, hopefully, trust and subsequent joy and justice. Your steadfast ability to sense and distinguish God's quiet voice from all others, tethers each moment of your life from promise to blessing. Rest, when you need to, under the juniper tree.