DAILY BYTE
It all started because the King of Israel – Ahab – married badly. Really badly! He married a woman named Jezebel who turned much of Israel away from God and over to Baal worship.
Elijah battled heroically against this. He struggled to turn the people back to God and told the first couple of Israel that the country would see no rain until this adulterous affair with Baal was cut short. So, over the course of 3 years, the land endured constant drought, which of course infuriated Ahab and Jezebel.
Eventually it was decided that there should be a big ‘faith face off’ with Elijah in one corner and all the prophets of Baal in the other. Each made a sacrifice on Mount Carmel, and whichever god lit this sacrifice would prove themselves as the real God of Israel!
The prophets of Baal went first. All day long they danced and prayed and sang around their sacrifice. All the while, Elijah had a lot of fun at their expense! He was laughing and teasing them, saying things like: ‘Perhaps Baal can’t hear you because he’s left the room to go to the bathroom, or maybe he’s answered his phone or something like that.’ (Ok, I made the part about the phone up!)
Finally at the end of the day Elijah prays and fires comes down from heaven to light his sacrifice. God wins! Elijah wins! The people were so angry at the prophets of Baal for duping them that they exterminated them on the spot. (Obviously life was a lot tougher for priests in those days – please don’t get any ideas concerning your resident minister). Then Elijah prayed for rain and it came – this was his finest hour, he should have been at the top of the world.
Except then he received a messenger from Jezebel – ‘Elijah because of what you have done I am going to take you out. Elijah you are a dead man!’
And this is where Israel’s hero story takes its usual unique turn. What does Elijah do in response? Does he thumb his nose at Jezebel? Does he say, ‘Go ahead, make my day you punk?’ Does his jut out his jaw and face the hordes of enemies that Jezebel throws at him? After all, that is what we expect our heroes to do.
No. Elijah wilts. He staggers. He turns pale and runs for his life.
We can only guess why but perhaps Elijah felt really let down by God at this point. After all his long years of struggle against Ahab and Jezebel, at a stage where he felt he had finally won, Elijah found that his battle was not yet over. Maybe he felt this was unfair and God owed him more. Perhaps the fear and the stress of this threat against his life totally overwhelmed him and drove out all sense of God’s presence from his life.
From this point on, although he hadn’t yet arrived in his literal cave, Elijah was already in a spiritual one. He was lost in the dark and stumbling about, feeling totally abandoned and alone.
PRAY AS YOU GO
O God, we commit every dark and lonely moment we have ever endured to you. Comfort us and protect us when we walk through those valleys and enter those caves. Even in the severest of temptations and doubts, may we stay faithful to you. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
1 Kings 19. 1-2 (NIV)
Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them."
