19th of Year B
August 2006
Ahab and Jezebel were king and queen of Israel. They abandoned the one true God and built altars and offered sacrifice to the Baals (or false gods) of the surrounding tribes. They had the prophets (as many as they could lay their hands on) of the one true God put to death. Elijah was the most revered prophet in Israel at that time and he spoke out fearlessly against Ahab and Jezebel. Naturally Elijah was not the flavour of the month for Ahab and Jezebel.
Jezebel was so annoyed that she swore a public oath; “May the gods bring unnameable ills on me, and worse ills too, if by this time tomorrow I have not put Elisha to death.” Naturally Elisha was afraid and fled for his life with immediate dispatch, with nothing but the clothes on his back.
Tired, depressed, hungry and thirsty he took shelter in the shade of a furze bush out in the desert. Lying there and wishing he were dead he said “Lord, I have had enough, take my life.'” Then he fell asleep. He woke up and found bread and a jar of water beside him. He ate and drank and slept again. Again he woke and ate and drank again. Thus strengthened he walked for forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, God's mountain.
We are all on a journey to God's mountain. We too must journey for ‘forty days and forty nights.' Like Elisha we sometimes find the journey too much. We pray that the journey be shortened or that the sun be less intense or even that the whole journey become unnecessary. But like Elisha we find that God will not or cannot shorten the journey or lessen the heat of the sun. What God does is give us the strength to keep going either directly or more often through the help and encouragement of others.
For those of us who have clocked up a fair bit of mileage, looking back over our lives, we may have realised that it is the ups and downs of life which have made us what we are. We may realise that without life's pains and troubles we might very well have ended up much nastier than we presently are. From our present perspective we might begin to realise that many events, which at the time we regarded as disasters, were in fact very important and necessary for our formation as fairly good people.