OSCILLATION - If the previous episode of the Tishbite atop Mt. Carmel in the battle of the gods, then this week’s lesson is the apex of his career. Within hours Elijah freefalls from the heights of victory to depressing depths of morass and depression. Consider this contrast-Elijah is a hero of faithfulness, he’s larger than life and a paragon of confidence and trust in God. He performs miracles through prayer-including the raising of the dead and calling fire down from heaven-outruns a chariot and confronts an evil-doing king and challenges a small army of Baalists. Yet suddenly-within hours?-this superhero is intimidated, suicidal, and self-doubting. In this wide oscillation between faith and doubt may be where we need to listen for our congregations.

SOUND OF FINE SILENCE - Sometimes God is not made known to us through flashy theophanies. Sometimes God is known in unspectacular ways, through the quiet working out of history. For Elijah, who had known the presence of God through God’s providence and through miraculous acts that clearly demonstrated God’s power, divine will was also manifested in his role in the ordination of his successor . . . God’s ‘voice’ may be present even amid God’s silence, as in the birth of a child to an unwed mother amid scandalous circumstances or in the death of an innocent man on the cross. [1]

A PRAYER- Father Gilbert Shaw (1886-1967)

Lord, give us grace to hold you when all is weariness and fear

And sin abounds within, without when love itself is tested by the doubt . . .

That love is false, or dead within the soul,

When every act brings new confusion, new distress, new opportunities,

New misunderstandings, and every thought new accusation.

Lord, give us grace that we may know that in the darkness pressing round

in the mist of sin that hides your face, that you are there.

I think this lesson should be told in the two parts in which they were originally complied-chapter 18: the super-hero Elijah juxtaposed to the events of chapter 19: the coming unglued Elijah.

Draw also on Psalm 42 as a supplement to this fascinating story.

Finally, take some time to research a bit in the arena of depression; visit the county health and human services office and ask them for some materials. (Like librarians, they are delighted to share from their vast reservoir of knowledge!)

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[1] New Interpreter’s Bible III (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), page 144.