We are in a hurry in our culture – the urgency to get where we are going immediately has been built into us from childhood. Getting to school, getting to work, getting to the next thing. Waiting for the oven to preheat or the document to download or the Amazon delivery to arrive – things that have been getting faster and faster still take too long.
There’s a sickness in that hurry – it leads to burnout and dissatisfaction Ave cynicism. The church is not immune from this – there have never been so many pastors leaving the profession as there are today. Does God have something to say about all this?
In this story, He does, as he takes care of Elijah in very simple, physical ways, while also looking after His emotional state.
This story comes right after the epic showdown at Mount Carmel, when Elijah faced down 450 prophets of Baal and God sends fire from heaven. It’s a major victory, but immediately afterwards we find Elijah on the run, terrified and in deep depression. The same can be true for us – we can experience the very real presence of God in our lives, yet still experience fear, doubt and weariness.
But God sends an angel to minister to him, bringing food and water. He doesn’t send the angel to chew him out or rebuke him, but to provide for him tangibly and physically, preparing him for the 40 days of journey ahead of him. This is a mirror of the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, in which ministering angels come to him after that same 40 day period.
This notion of rest calls back to the Creation story in Genesis, where God rests on the seventh day. Now, God does not get tired such that He needs to rest. But His resting and settling apart the sabbath as Holy is a part of the boundary setting and differentiation throughout creation – sea from sky, water from land, work from rest.
We are particularly bad about those boundaries. But if God Himself can rest, surely we can do the same? Resting itself is an act of worship – a tithe of our time and our sense of work and urgency and control to God. This is part of what it means to be a living sacrifice.
Rest and exercise are both “of some value.” We see this in God ministering to Elijah, and we see it in Jesus’ patterns of ministry, regularly retreating to isolated places to reconnect with His Father and His followers.
As the angel told Elijah, the journey will be long. God will not remove the work from us, but He will give us what we need to accomplish. The lie of the race is that there will not be enough time to accomplish everything we need to. But God will provide all the time we need in order to accomplish all He has for us to do – and no more. We can rest in that.
And we can rest in the words of Christ – “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
– Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood, WA, May 22, 2022