Despair

Elijah went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors."   1 Kings 19:4

Elijah is done.  He no longer has the energy to fight Jezebel. He admits defeat, flees into the desert, collapses under a broom tree, and asks God to take his life.  Ever been there?  Been just too tired to put any more effort into a relationship or a situation and just wanted to walk away from it?

Elijah is every one of us. We struggle to stay afloat, to do the right thing, to invest in good relationships to be productive members of society….  But every once in a while, we just want to cry out,  “What’s the point?  Why am I on this hamster wheel? What’s it all for?”  We are not strangers to bouts of despair.

What’s striking about this story is God’s action in it, not Elijah’s. Elijah has given up, laid everything down, and some might say “gotten out of his own way.”  But God?  God sends help. And God sends help again. And God redeems the situation until Elijah gathers his wits about him and has the strength and perspective to go on. Just like Hagar, who laid her dying son Ishmael under a tree in the desert to wait for him to die, God came.

That is the promise: that God comes to us in our despair, in our desert times.  

God will not give up on us --- even when we’ve given up ourselves.  

God is there. Waiting. Redeeming. Loving.