The Whisper for the Prophet Who Wanted to Quit

Elijah had just run all the way to Jezreel ahead of King Ahab's chariot, in the pouring rain. The running was not over.

Ahab told Queen Jezebel everything: the fire from heaven, and how Elijah had the prophets of Baal killed. Jezebel sent Elijah a message. "By this time tomorrow, you will be as dead as my prophets!"

Elijah ran. He ran south and walked a whole day into the desert. At last he dropped down under a broom bush. (A broom bush is a scrubby desert shrub, no good for sweeping and not much better for shade.)

"I have had enough, LORD," he said. "Let me die. I am no better than my fathers were." Then he fell asleep.

An angel touched him. "Get up and eat."

By Elijah's head was a loaf of bread baking on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate, he drank, and he lay right back down.

The angel came a second time. "Get up and eat, because the journey is too much for you."

God had not spoken one cross word. He had given Elijah bread and sleep.

That food carried Elijah forty days and forty nights, all the way to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. (Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai, where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.) He crawled into a cave.

"What are you doing here, Elijah?" the LORD asked.

The words came pouring out. "I have worked so hard for you! Your people have broken their promises, smashed your altars, and killed your prophets. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."

"Go out and stand on the mountain," said the LORD. "I am about to pass by."

Then a wind came that ripped the mountain and smashed the rocks. But the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind, an earthquake. The LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, a fire. The LORD was not in the fire.

And after the fire came the sound of a gentle whisper.

When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and stepped out to the mouth of the cave.

"What are you doing here, Elijah?"

Elijah gave the same speech, word for word.

God did not argue. He gave Elijah work: two new kings to anoint, and Elisha to anoint as prophet after him. "And you are not the only one," said the LORD. "I have kept seven thousand people in Israel who have never bowed down to Baal."

So Elijah went and found Elisha plowing with twelve pairs of oxen, and threw his cloak over him. Elisha killed the pair he was driving, cooked them over a fire made from his plow, fed the people, and followed Elijah.

The bread on the hot stones kept Elijah going for forty days, but bread runs out. And when God came close on the mountain, Elijah still had to hide his face.

The prophets who came after Elijah kept promising that one day God himself would come close to his people.

Then another man went into the wilderness and ate nothing for forty days, and when it was over, angels came and cared for him. Once, when his friends were so busy they had no time even to eat, he told them, "Come away with me to a place where we can be alone, and rest a while."

One day, high on a mountain, Elijah stood beside him and talked with him face to face about the journey he would finish in Jerusalem. It was Jesus.