Under a broom tree, Elijah sat there. He didn’t feel like eating and resting. He was grumbling, murmuring, and thinking. Thinking can be tiring. Elijah’s psychological state wasn’t so good. “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers” (1 Kgs. 19:4b). He was restive and depressed. He needed to rest. So “he lay down and slept” (19:5a). God didn’t say anything at this point.
Elijah was restive and restless. God knew that Elijah couldn’t hear a thing until he took some rest. Sometimes God addresses us in our restiveness. But most of the time, God refuses to do so. His refusal is not because God dislikes this condition. Rather, He knows that we often fail to listen in this condition in which we pray in mono-logue, not di-alogue. Monologue is part of prayer; however, prayer is not about monologue. In the narrative, God waited for a better moment. God’s better moment, in Elijah’s eyes, may mean God’s absence and silence. But in God’s sight, there was a reason for His “absent-silence.” Philip Yancey writes,
“When I am tempted to complain about God’s lack of presence, I remind myself that God has much more reason to complain about my lack of presence. I reserve a few minutes a day for God, but how many times do I drown out or ignore the quiet voice that speaks to my conscience and my life?...Every relationship involves two free partners. With my computer I have a mechanical bond: I turn it on and expect it to respond in predictable programmed ways. No relationship with human beings work that way, whether between friends, husband and wife, work colleagues, or parents and children. Each involves missed cues, conflicting schedules, varying moods and a dose of autonomy. Each goes through times of closeness as well as seasons that might be called arid.”[1]
God is our free partner. He is our covenantal partner. The former one indicates voluntary participation, creativity, and autonomy. The latter idea limits one’s freedom and indicates boundaries. God is absolutely free in relation to us; He is voluntarily towards us. As Calvin said,
“In understanding faith it is not merely a question of knowing that God exists, but also—and this especially—of knowing what is his will toward us. For it is not so much our concern to know who he is in himself, as what he wills to be toward us. Now, therefore, we hold faith to be a knowledge of God’s will toward us, perceived from his Word” (Institutes, 3.2.6).
Calvin is not interested in speculating the God as He is in himself, but the God as He is towards us. This is God’s voluntary act towards fallen, corrupted sinners. “God wills towards us” leads to the Incarnation of the Son—God the Son is bounded in the form of slave.
1 Kgs. 19:5b—“And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Arise and eat.’” Before addressing Elijah’s spiritual depression, God took care of his physical exhaustion. Biblical spirituality is not only about our spiritual life or psychological wholeness. It’s about a whole person: body, mind, and soul. God is concerned our physical needs no less than our spiritual and psychological needs. This is God’s care for Elijah.[2]
This is how David G. Benner, Professor of Psychology and Spirituality at Richmont Graduate University in Atlanta, defines Soul Care:
“As a working definition, let us understand soul as referring to the whole person, including the body, but with particular focus on the inner world of thinking, feeling, and willing. Care of souls can thus be understood as the care of persons in their totality, with particular attention to their inner lives.” He then continues, “This can never be accomplished by ignoring a person’s physical existence or the external world o behavior. Properly understood, soul care nurtures the inner life and guides the expression of this inner life through the body into external behavior. This is what it means to speak of care of souls as the care of persons in their totality.”[3]
Through His interaction with Elijah, we can say that God is a soul care practitioner.
In the cave, God fed him. “And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. “And he ate and drank and lay down again” (19:6). This is God’s timely providence. How did the angel of the Lord serve him food and water? We don’t know. But Elijah ate and then slept. God provided without a word. But this non-verbal care should remind Elijah of what happened to him before:
“And the word of the Lord came to him, ‘Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.’ So he went and did according to the word of the Lord…And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.” (1 Kgs. 17:2-6)
When Elijah lay down, was he thinking about the providence and the mysterious way of God? He first lay down with frustration and exhaustion. The second time he lay down, he entered into meditation and wonder—he might not understand the present, but he couldn’t deny the past.
The second time the angel of the Lord came and touched Elijah again, saying, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you” (19:7). Elijah regained his strength from rest and food. He journeyed for forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God (19:8). Horeb is also known as Mount Sinai—the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God, where God made a covenant with Israel, and where Israel said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient” (Exod. 24:7; 19:8).
“Why Mt. Horeb? Because deep in Elijah’s history, deep in his spiritual experience, he was aware that this was a place of possibility: this was the place where the people of Israel encountered God when they needed God most.”[4]
In the most unexpected place, the God of universe became the God of Israel. The transcendent God cannot be domesticated, but He localizes himself as the imminent God. Israel as sojourners became covenantal partners. On the way to the Promised Land—the place where Israel had no idea what it would be like—God first entered into a covenantal relationship with Israel. The people of Israel encountered God the most in the desert because God intensely engaged with Israel with His words.
“It is clear that the Torah mediated by Moses at Mount Sinai is not fixed, closed, and settled at the termination of Moses’ work. The Torah as mediation includes an open-ended dynamic and an ongoing vitality that goes beyond Moses…The concrete practice of Torah consists not simply in having a scroll from Moses as a fixed, settled law. Rather the practice of Torah consists in regular, stated, public meetings in which Israel…is constituted and reconstituted. This meeting is presented in the text as a replication of Sinai, whereby Israel was constituted in speaking and hearing, only now the reconstitution is performed in different times and places and circumstances, and with different lead characters…The purpose of this Torah-centered meeting was to permit the assembly to become Israel once again.”[5]
Mount Horeb implies possibility, revelation, reengagement, reconstitution, and possible Torah-centered meeting. Is it possible that Elijah journeyed to Mt. Horeb because it was there God journeyed downward towards Israel? Is it possible that he journeyed there to re-visit the faith of his ancestors and re-engage with the law of God in order to look for personal renewal and revival?
In the exchange of speaking and hearing the Torah, the covenant can be re-enacted. Horeb is called “the mount of God” because God revealed himself as the God of covenant there. Elijah knew that.
[1] Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006), p. 201.
[2] When Jesus saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, he fed them with five loaves and two fish (Matt. 14:13-21; Mk. 6:30-44; Lk. 9:10-17; Jn. 6:1-14).
[3] Care of Souls: Revisioning Christian Nurture and Counsel (Grand Rapids: Baker; Cumbria: Paternoster, 1998), p. 22.
[4] Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence (Downers Grove: IVP, 2010), p. 87.
[5] Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), pp. 583-584.
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