(Elijah #4-1/6)

• Paul Harrison

1 Kings 19:1-18

James reminds us, in the New Testament book that bears his name (5:17), that
"Elijah was a man of human frailty like ourselves." Nowhere is his frailty more
obvious than in the episode recorded in the 19th chapter of I Kings. It comes as a
surprise.

Nothing in the narrative up to that point has prepared us for the prophet’s sudden
tumble into ‘the slough of despond’. No trace of weakness has appeared in the
man. The phrase he used when he spoke of himself seemed to fit him exactly: "A man of
Yahweh, before whom I stand." Clad in the whole armour of God, he has contended
against the principalities and powers of this world, and stood his ground. At the end of
the day, you expect him still to be standing. But not a bit of it. Threatened by a woman,
he runs like a frightened rabbit, clear across the country, on and on, until he loses
himself in the desert, overwhelmed by depression. What accounted for it?

THE REASONS FOR HIS DEPRESSION

1. Exhaustion

When he collapsed on his bed in Jezreel at the end of his big day on Carmel, Elijah was
a spent man. Three years of pent-up emotions had been released that day; the same day in
which he had built an altar. wrestled in prayer on the mountain top, his head between his
knees in fervent concentration. then dealt with the prophets of Baal; and finally, after
all that, he had girded up his loins and run like the wind ahead of the king’s
chariot to Jezreel, twenty miles away.

All the man’s energies had been fiercely consumed. He was all in. And the man has
not been born whose spirits are not likely to fail when he is worn out. Proper sleep,
regular meals and adequate leisure are a vital part of our spiritual health; they really
are. Later in the story God Himself was careful to restore these things to His servant.

Exhaustion was one thing that weakened the servant of God.

2. Fear

Sheer weariness left him too weak to fight it: weaker, at any rate than he might
otherwise have been.

Jezebel’s fury, of course, was fresh … and "hell hath no fury like a woman
scorned!" Even so, had Elijah had his wits about him, he would have realised that in
fact he was in no real or immediate danger. The queen sent a messenger to him with
threats; why not an assassin with a knife? The simple truth was that while Elijah’s
triumph was still fresh in the people’s minds, she dare not lay a finger on him. All
she could hope to do was scare him off. And she succeeded! But she owed her success, not
so much to any real power of her own, as to the prophet’s fear.

A man of human frailty like ourselves! How very often Jesus said, "Fear not
…" much more often than He said, "Sin not!" – by a ratio of at least 5 to
1 on a rough count!

3. Loneliness

Exhausted and afraid, he felt alone … and as God said at the beginning, before even
Adam fell, "It is not good that the man should be alone."

Alone, Elijah had of course wrought valiantly till now. But you cannot stand alone for
ever, and Elijah had been alone too long. Where was Obadiah that lonely night for Elijah
in Jezreel? Should he have sought Elijah out? Should Elijah have sought him out, and
shared his fear with him before he yielded rashly to it?

Let none of us fancy ourselves strong enough to tread the path of our pilgrimage to its
end without help, or without company. The fellowship of other Christians is vital to us;
and I mean fellowship, not camaraderie – the kind of fellowship where you can expose your
weakness and not be rebuked for it, but be understood in it, and accepted in it, and
sometimes (if only we were not so proud) carried in it, at least a little way.

Notice how careful God was (later in the story) to supply that need too, by giving His
servant the company of Elisha.

Exhaustion, fear, loneliness – all these contributed to Elijah’s depression. But
perhaps the one thing more than any other that brought it on was …

4. The feeling of futility

It is not hard to understand what went on in his mind when Jezebel threatened him after
his day of triumph. You can read back to his frame of mind from the complaint he later
made to God: "I am not better than my fathers … and I’m all that is left …
and soon they’ll finish me off. It has all come to nothing."

We can understand how he was thinking. God controlled the world of nature, yes. Wind,
rain, fire – He had all that in His hand. But the world God did not control – or so it
seemed to the prophet in his threatened situation – was the world of people. There was not
any doubt about God’s power over the elements of nature; but Jezebel was something
else again! Ahab might be impressed by the events on Mt. Carmel, but not she. She was made
of sterner stuff.

What was the use of all the pyrotechnics up on the mountain if Israel was still to be
ruled by Jezebel? God’s deed had not changed her heart, but rather hardened it. Come
to that, what had it produced even in the people but a cry? It was all an empty victory
then. The great action which he had thought would settle everything had apparently settled
nothing. Elijah was finished, and Jezebel was just getting started. Now the fact that he
felt himself to be alone was frightening. Before, in some curious way, it had made him
strong, had fired his courage. Now it made him weak, and he was terrified.

He ran. From north to south, clear across the country, his fear drove him. Not content
to put the whole southern kingdom of Judah between himself and Jezebel, he left his
jackeroo there, at the edge of cultivation and stumbled on until he lost himself in the
desert. There he collapsed under the shade of a broom tree and gave himself over to
selfpity and despair. Nothing he had done seemed in the least degree worthwhile. He had
laid his life on the line to do it, and he was helpless to do anything more. Nothing had
changed – nothing at all. His whole life had become utterly meaningless; and nothing is so
oppressive to the human spirit as a sense of futility, the feeling that life is
meaningless. (More than anything else, it makes widespread unemployment a grievous social
sickness.)

"The depth of gloom into which even the brightest servant of God may sink when the
light of faith and hope is darkened nowhere appears more poignantly than in this picture
of the mighty prophet, huddled under a broom tree, and praying his silly prayer to
die."

Not many of us succeed in avoiding some such experience in our lives. Some of the best
respected men in Christian history were prone to moods of black depression: Martin Luther,
the great pioneer of the reformation; William Cowper, the hymn writer;

Abraham Lincoln, who was so afflicted at one time that he wrote to a friend,
"Whether I shall ever be better, I do not know. I must die, or be better, as it seems
to me."

Ministers of the Gospel experience it no less than others, servants of the Word though
they be. "What have I been spending my life for?" he will ask himself one day.
"Who is there, really, who is any the better for what I’ve done? For all my
preaching, toil and patient caring, for all my praying come to that, who among my people
is really any the better for it?" And what of the state of his own heart? The same
weary temptations assail him that beset him in his youth, and which he vowed then so
vigorously to overcome; still they dog his path, and though he may often have resisted
them, all those old victories seem to shrivel down to nothing under the lash of a fresh
defeat. "It is enough," he says. "O Lord, I am not better than my
fathers." (Why he ever thought he might be is of course another question!)

Depression is no new thing; and it is much more common among Christian people than we
are generally willing to admit. This chapter in Elijah’s story is as relevant to us
in our own time as we have seen the other chapters to be. Not that this chapter can be
read as a comprehensive remedy for depression in general; we must keep it within the
framework of Elijah’s circumstances in particular; but it will have some helpful
things to say to us, nonetheless.

THE REMEDY FOR HIS DEPRESSION

[Continued in CLM 934 Where is God... (Part 2)]

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