- David Sellnow
“What are you doing here?”
Many times many of God’s people will wonder, “What am I doing here?” … and oftentimes will be thinking to themselves, “I don’t want to be here.”
A grandmother sits in her room in a nursing home. She’s elderly. She’s lonely.
She’s tired. She feels like life
is over but at the same time it won’t end.
She doesn’t want to watch the news on TV anymore; she feels the world
has gone down the drain and it’s all too depressing. She wants to be done with life.
A young woman sits and contemplates her life—just sits for hours on end, her mind a blur of depressed and anxious thoughts. She’s been bullied many times by people more forceful than she could ever be. She’s felt shoved aside by others whose interests seem to count as more interesting than hers. She has to fake happiness and normalness when she goes out in public. She’s lost herself in the process of life, not sure who she is or why she is. She contemplates suicide. She wants to be done with it all.
A middle-aged man sits and swirls a drink in his hand. He mulls over the mediocre misery of his existence. Nothing he does ever seems to bring success. He goes to work, he pays the bills … but never seems to get ahead. Anytime things begin going better, some crisis or setback sends everything back to zero again, or worse. He never feels accomplished. He never feels at peace. He’d rather retreat somewhere and be done with it all.
A pastor sits in his office, discouraged. He thinks, “My ministry is fruitless. I knock on 100 doors and no one wants to listen. I send out 1,000 flyers in the mail and no one responds.” Nobody new comes to church, and the existing membership of the church keeps dwindling. The pastor dreams about getting called to serve somewhere else – somewhere more exciting, somewhere where more people follow his lead. But it’s been years and no such call is forthcoming. He considers turning in his resignation, just being done with it all.
An author sits at his desk, pondering the demise of Christianity in America. He writes: “The light of Christianity is flickering out all over the West. There are people alive today who may live to see the death of Christianity within our civilization. … Barring a dramatic reversal of current trends, the faith will all but disappear entirely from Europe and North America. This may not be the end of the world, but it is the end of a world, and only the willfully blind will deny it.” (From chapter 1 of The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher, 2017.) What does the author recommend to his readers? Something he calls The Benedict Option: Pull away from the world and strengthen one another in our own pious communities. The Week magazine provided this summary of the author’s recommendations in The Benedict Option, a book published earlier this year:
A young woman sits and contemplates her life—just sits for hours on end, her mind a blur of depressed and anxious thoughts. She’s been bullied many times by people more forceful than she could ever be. She’s felt shoved aside by others whose interests seem to count as more interesting than hers. She has to fake happiness and normalness when she goes out in public. She’s lost herself in the process of life, not sure who she is or why she is. She contemplates suicide. She wants to be done with it all.
A middle-aged man sits and swirls a drink in his hand. He mulls over the mediocre misery of his existence. Nothing he does ever seems to bring success. He goes to work, he pays the bills … but never seems to get ahead. Anytime things begin going better, some crisis or setback sends everything back to zero again, or worse. He never feels accomplished. He never feels at peace. He’d rather retreat somewhere and be done with it all.
A pastor sits in his office, discouraged. He thinks, “My ministry is fruitless. I knock on 100 doors and no one wants to listen. I send out 1,000 flyers in the mail and no one responds.” Nobody new comes to church, and the existing membership of the church keeps dwindling. The pastor dreams about getting called to serve somewhere else – somewhere more exciting, somewhere where more people follow his lead. But it’s been years and no such call is forthcoming. He considers turning in his resignation, just being done with it all.
An author sits at his desk, pondering the demise of Christianity in America. He writes: “The light of Christianity is flickering out all over the West. There are people alive today who may live to see the death of Christianity within our civilization. … Barring a dramatic reversal of current trends, the faith will all but disappear entirely from Europe and North America. This may not be the end of the world, but it is the end of a world, and only the willfully blind will deny it.” (From chapter 1 of The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher, 2017.) What does the author recommend to his readers? Something he calls The Benedict Option: Pull away from the world and strengthen one another in our own pious communities. The Week magazine provided this summary of the author’s recommendations in The Benedict Option, a book published earlier this year:
- Christians need to turn inward, steeling themselves against the pernicious moral influences swirling around them by adopting a "rule for living" that turns their faith into the orienting focal point of their lives. … [The] book offers practical suggestions for how to live out this vision of deep piety amidst the ruins of Christian civilization: Attempt to live in proximity to like-minded Christians; pull children out of aggressively secular public schools; recover liturgical worship; tighten church discipline; devote family time to studying scripture; place strict limits on digital technology in the home; and so on. Only when a comprehensive form of Christian living has been recovered and instantiated in concrete communities will believers be equipped to begin the daunting task of attempting to win back the wider culture from the forces of secular nihilism. [Quoted from “Why Many Christians Feel Likea Persecuted Minority, by Damon Linker, The Week (March 13, 2017).
These sorts of feelings among Christians are not new. From the forlorn nursing home resident to the
distressed young adult who both want to give up, from the disillusioned
minister to the man in mid-life crisis who both feel they’re accomplishing
nothing, people of faith often give in to lack of faith, to an overall aura of
doom and gloom. There’s a reason a book
like The Benedict Option became a bestseller.
When godly people don’t see the sort of glorious success of godliness in
the world that we’d like to see—that we think we should see—we give in to that
feeling that we’d rather go crawl off into a cave in a mountainside somewhere
and just be done with it all.
As I said, the feeling isn’t new.
There was a prophet, who prophesied powerfully in the name
of the LORD. The land in which he lived
had wandered far from the LORD. The
rulers of the kingdom, Ahab and Jezebel, pursued other priorities and other
gods, and the people followed en masse in such Baal-worshiping directions. So the prophet, Elijah, challenged the
people: “How long will you
waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but
if Baal is God, follow him” (1 Kings
18:21). The prophet invited his
spiritual opponents to a monumental duel, a contest of sacrifices set up on
Mount Carmel.
You know what happened.
The prophets of Baal screamed and prayed all day, even slashing
themselves with swords and spears to impress their god with their devoted
fervor. But they could accomplish
nothing. Their god was a nothing. Then, in the evening, Elijah prepared his
sacrifice, and had his opponents soak the animal carcass and wood and stones
with water, to the point that water also filled a whole trench around the
altar. Elijah prayed just once, saying,
“Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that
you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again” (1
Kings 18:37).
Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up
the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water
in the trench (1 Kings 18:38). The
people were momentarily impressed. The
prophets of Baal were put to death. But
it didn’t take long for momentum to swing back in the direction of the king and
queen, and against God’s prophet. Hearts
weren’t turned to the LORD for long. That’s
where we pick up the story today, in the Bible chapter we take up as we start
this week, 1 Kings chapter 19 (NIV):
Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had
done and how he had killed all the prophets [of Baal] 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.”
Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came
to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he
himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom
bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had
enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my
ancestors.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.
All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and
eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked
over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
The angel of the Lord came back a second
time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for
you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he
traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the
mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the
night.
And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are
you doing here, Elijah?”
He replied, “I have been very zealous for
the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your
covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with
the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me
too.”
The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the
mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about
to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart
and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in
the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was
not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but
the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle
whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his
face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God
Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars,
and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and
now they are trying to kill me too.”
The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you
came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint
Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king
over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to
succeed you as prophet. Jehu will put to death any who escape the
sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of
Jehu. Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees
have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”
So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing
with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah
went up to him and threw his cloak around him. Elisha then
left his oxen and ran after Elijah. “Let me kiss my father and mother
goodbye,” he said, “and then I will come with you.”“Go back,” Elijah replied. “What have I done to you?”
So Elisha left him and went back. He took his yoke
of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the
meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah
and became his servant.
In short, the Lord’s message to a despairing Elijah was, “Do not despair. The word of the LORD is still at work, and you still have work to do.” Regardless of where we find ourselves in life – in youth, in mid-life, in old age … in a culture where Christianity is thriving or in a culture which makes Christians uncomfortable … in a ministry where we see miraculous successes happening or at times when it takes great faith to see God’s hidden purposes because God seems so far away – in every place and in every age of history, God is with his people. And he affirms to us what he affirmed to Elijah: The word of the LORD is still at work, and we still have work to do. Even in the darkest days, there remain reasons to rejoice, reasons to hope, reasons to go forward in his name.
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