More Thoughts on Powerlessness February 28, 2009

Feelings of powerlessness come when we feel empty, when we feel the life has been sucked out of us, when we feel completely unable to effect change, when we feel spent and that no one values our life.
 
This is how Elijah the prophet felt. After confronting, defeating, and killing the false prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. We read in 1 Kings 19.3-5:
 
Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day's journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, LORD," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.

We all have deserts we run to, some place we hide, far away where no one can find us. It can be a physical place, it can be a state of mind, it can be in the stupor of alcohol or durgs. It can even be among people where we put on a façade under whose thick layers the real us lies.
 
We know we have reached the place of utter loss when we hear ourselves saying, “I don’t care. I have no strength to care.” As Elijah said, “I have had enough, take my life,” and then lies down lifeless.
 
The story of Elijah offers such a good example to people whose buckets have drained out. With no power left, having spent it all, Elijah feels like an empty, shriveled vessel. The spirit that drove him lies as flat and listless as worn, uninflated balloon.
 
How does one recover except by waiting, resting, and keeping our windows cracked for the light, gentle touch of God.
 
Read all of 1 Kings 19 carefully. After Elijah lies down, God sends an angel to awaken him, touching him, and then just feeding him. It’s just food, not a command or vision or expectation, but a little fresh cake and water. After that, Elijah lies down and goes back to sleep.
 
He reminds me of my sons who become listless and unresponsive when sick. And that’s it: Elijah is soul and spirit sick. He had stood up to 850 false prophets in a spectacular match in which fire came down from the heavens to consume an impossible wet mound of sacrificial offering, and then he had them, in the words of the Bible, “slaughtered.” The episode ends with Jezebel sending death threats to him. How could he not feel sick to his stomach?
 
Like a loving parent, God knows his servant has nothing left, and He loves Elijah nonetheless. Can we remember that? That God loves us because He just does—and not for what we can do or have done for him? The Lord looks lovingly on us and does not push us on. Sometimes he just lets us rest without saying a word.
 
After letting Elijah rest, God feeds him again, this time saying, “Get up and eat for the journey is too much for you.” God sends Elijah on a journey and he provides the strength to do it.
 
God provides the means for the way…the way to Him because Elijah’s journey takes him to Mount Horeb, “the mountain of God” (1 Kings 19:8), the place where Moses received from the Ten Commandments from God. Here, Elijah also encounters God, but it is a curious interaction.
 
God asks Elijah, “What are you doing here?” He asks Elijah this twice, and I don’t think God poses this as either rhetorical or redundant but truly one that He wants Elisha to answer. And here’s where I find it curious. Elijah answers the question, “What are you doing here” with what he has done, and he gives the same answer both times:
He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."  1Kings 19:10 and 14.
I believe Elijah answers in this way the first time because he simply doesn’t know why he is there – so he tells God about what he has done, the condition of his life, and the loneliness of his existence. “I am the only one left.”
 
God’s answer is amazing. He answers by showing Elijah his presence – but God’s presence does not look like what Elijah thinks. He is not in powerful winds, earthquakes or fires. God is not in things that look destructive and are overpowering. Instead, God is in a gentle whisper.
 
And isn’t that what we all want to hear, a gentle whisper? We want a voice that penetrates our heart and touches the intimate parts of our soul and says, “I hear you, I understand you, I love you. My power does not overpower and destroy you or suck the life out of you. My power, my presence is a voice that validates your existence.”
 
What happens when God asks the question again, “What are you doing here?” is that Elijah answers exactly the same as before – this time not because he doesn’t know what to say but because he understands that he has been called to a cause that God will empower. And because of that, Elijah in the end can undertake God’s mission to go to the Desert of Damascus and anoint a king for him as well as Elijah’s successor, Elisha.
 
The answer to powerlessness is perhaps not to seek to be refilled with what we were emptied of, but to continually discover where and what true power is. What I am learning is that true power gives life by saying in a gentle whisper, “You count.”
 
We rob people and make them powerlessness when we say or indicate to them that they do not count.
 
Can we make our challenge this Lent to listen for God’s whisper, and hearing him can we whisper into the hearts of others?
 
 
 

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