The Day Fire Fell on the Mountain

(1 Kings 18)

Do you know what it feels like to be the only one?

The only one who says, "This is true," when everyone else is shaking their heads. The only voice in a crowd that has already made up its mind. It is a cold and lonely feeling. Elijah knew it well.

By now the kings of Israel had given their hearts to idols, and where a king leads, a whole land follows. King Ahab had built altars to Baal, a god made of nothing at all, a god who could not hear and could not answer, and the people had drifted after him. For three long years no rain had fallen. This was the same drought in which a widow in Zarephath had shared her last handful of flour with Elijah. Now God sent his prophet to the mountain, and Elijah stood and looked out at the crowd. Eight hundred and fifty prophets of Baal.

And one of him.

One.

"Let us see who is really God," Elijah said. "Build an altar. Lay the wood. We will each ask our god to send down fire. The one who answers, he is the true and living God."

So the prophets of Baal went first. They called on their god from morning till noon. They shouted. They danced. They cried louder and louder. And what came back? Nothing at all, only the wind moving over an empty mountain. Because Baal was never there.

Then Elijah called the people close. He built an altar out of twelve stones, one stone for each of God's children, his whole family. And then he poured water over it. Water on the wood, water in the trench, until the altar was soaked and dripping and nothing was left that could ever catch fire on its own.

He wanted everyone to see. Whatever happened next would not be a trick. It would be God.

Then Elijah prayed, in a plain, steady voice, the way you might talk to a father you trust. "Lord, let them know that you are God, and that you are turning their hearts back home to you."

And the fire fell.

It came down from heaven and ate up the offering, the wood, the stones, the water, all of it, in a roar of light. And every single person fell on their faces and cried, "The Lord, he is God! The Lord, he is God!"

The one who had stood alone was not alone at all. God had been with him all along.

On that mountain, the fire fell on the altar. It did not fall on the people.

One day, long after, another would climb a hill. He would not call fire down to win an argument. He would stand alone, truly alone, with the whole crowd against him. And when the fire of everything wrong came looking for someone to fall on, Jesus would not step aside. He would open his arms and take it onto himself, so that it would never, ever fall on you.

God keeps his promises. He had promised to bring his children home, every one. And that very evening, while the people were still saying his name, a small cloud rose up over the sea, and the rain the land had waited three years for came sweeping in.