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EARTH, WIND, AND FIRE

There was a humorous little anecdote in the Reader’s Digest a few months ago, where a couple of priests go off on vacation. They’re a million miles away from the monastery, and so they’re cruising up and down the sandy beaches wearing loud Tommy Hilfiger shirts, shorts, sunglasses, beach sandals, suntan oil, the works. “Two wild and crazy guys,” as the old Saturday Night Live expression goes. And the second day out there, two drop-dead gorgeous young ladies in brief bathing suits walk by and say to them casually, “Good morning, father.”

Huh? The men gulp. How, in these colorful shirts and New York Mets baseball hats, did the ladies know they were priests? But they shrug, hang a few more Hawaiian flowers around their necks, and keep on soaking up the sun.

The next day, dressed in the same colorful, incognito outfits, they’re out there on the beach again. And here come the two young ladies, now wearing the tiniest of string bikinis. And again they say, very cheerfully: “Hello, fathers.”

And one man can’t stand it any more. “Excuse me,” he says, “we’re priests, and proud of it, but how did you know?”

And the taller girl says: “Don’t you recognize us? We’re Sister Agnes and Sister Martha from your convent back home.”

I guess there’s been more than one occasion where I was on vacation, a long, long ways from the parish boundaries . . . only to hear a familiar voice shout out: “Pastor Lonnie! Imagine finding you here!” And you’re thankful at a time like that that you’re leafing through the Reader’s Digest there at the airport magazine stand and not something more colorful. Because nothing sends chills up and down a preacher’s spine faster than to hear the words: “What are you doing HERE?”

And you know, right down close to the end of our Elijah Experience, this up-and-down spiritual roller coaster ride — the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat – our failed hero Elijah decides to put on a Hawaiian shirt and leave the world of organized religion to someone else. But this is no vacation trip to Maui; he’s fleeing from wicked Queen Jezebel, who has put a bounty on his head, and he’s a hundred miles away from anybody and everybody, out in the desert beyond Beersheba.

It was kind of touching to read here in I Kings 19 that even way out in the sand dunes of nowhere, God knows exactly where his discouraged servant is. God isn’t angry with Elijah; He doesn’t scold him or take away his pastor’s credentials. In fact, heaven sends an angel to prepare Elijah a meal for the journey. And after being sustained by the angel food cake, our lonely friend walks all by himself for 40 days and 40 nights until he gets to a cave in the mountain of Horeb, which is another name for Sinai. The Bible calls Horeb “the mountain of God” because that’s where God’s original covenant with Israel was established, and it doesn’t take long for God to come to the mouth of that cave where Elijah is trying to escape from civilization.

And God has just one quiet question for His friend:

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

That’s all. Just those six words: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” No condemnation, no scolding, no more verbal fire from the skies. Just that quiet query: “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here; you’re supposed to be standing in the palace court of Ahab and Jezebel, standing under the shadow of My protection, bringing that wicked, fallen regime to an end. Elijah, you’re My chosen man, the prophet I anointed with special power. Together on Mount Carmel we rocked the empire. What in the world are you doing HERE?”

Let me ask you a Thursday question, friend . . . and today’s Bible lesson is certainly one I’ve got to aim right at my own heart too. Has there ever been a time where God could have used you to say a word or two on behalf of His kingdom — and you hid yourself in the corner instead? Have you ever been on an airplane, and the person seated next to you might have been blessed if you had mentioned your faith, your relationship with God, even just the briefest expression of your belief that He IS, that He exists. But you hid behind a magazine and tried to be left alone.

Has there ever been a time when you should have taken a trip God wanted you to take: to a hospital room, to a prison, to a volunteer project, even to church last weekend? But you didn’t want to. You went in the other direction, and left the battle to someone else.

Well, I see myself in my own questions here, sorry to say. And maybe right now I can hear the quiet voice of God: “Lonnie, what are you doing HERE? I prepared the way for you to do something important for Me over in X county . . . so why are you HERE instead?” He doesn’t shout; He doesn’t thunder — but I do hear Him asking the question.

I’m really appreciating the sage bits of wisdom from an old book entitled Prophets and Kings. I know many of you have read it too, and here’s what the writer, E. G. White, says about that conversation in the cave:

“To every child of God whose voice the enemy of souls had succeeded in silencing, the question is addressed, ‘What doest thou here?’ I commissioned you to go into all the world and preach the gospel, to prepare a people for the day of the Lord. Why are you HERE? Who sent you?”

And friend, that sober question isn’t just for those of us who pass up invitations to be missionaries in the far-flung corners of the world. The Lord asks me that question when I hide in my own home instead of attending church. When I ignore my neighbor because I’d rather protect my space, my free time. He asks me that question right here in Moorpark, California.

Well, Elijah, still discouraged and blistered from the enemy’s attacks and the sand in his sandals, pours out a tale of woe unto the Lord. When God asks him, “What are you doing here?”, he’s got an answer. Here’s verse 10:

“[Elijah] 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.”

And actually, that’s a pretty fair response. Elijah had endured for three years. He’d gambled it all on the Lord time and time again, and after a string of successes, the dice had finally come up snake-eyes. Or so it seemed. The whole nation was going down the drain despite his best efforts. All of God’s original Sinai dreams have turned to dust, and by the way, had the Lord seen the threatening note Mrs. Jezebel had sent him by DHL overnight courier? “I’m going to kill you by sundown tomorrow”? That one?

And God said to Elijah:

“Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

And now we get the great trilogy preachers like to talk about. Here in verse 11 we read about a great wind that blew through the mountain, sending a mighty spray of rocks in all directions . . . but the Lord was not in the wind. Then the very earth shook in a 7.1 Richter-scale temblor . . . but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And then Act Three was a sheet of fire, which rained down brimstone and hot coals all around the terrified runaway prophet . . . but the Lord was not in the fire.

And when the huge, digital, Dolby display was through, when the noise and the rocking and the rolling were finally over, the aftershocks finished, there was a quiet whisper. And the Lord was in the whisper. And He asked the same question again: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Maybe you’ve heard the spiritual expression: “A still small voice.” This is where it comes from: I Kings chapter 19, right after the wind and the earthquake and the fire. God got very close and He spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice. “What are you doing here? My servant, My friend, My ambassador to the world . . . what are you doing HERE?”

And after Elijah repeats his sob story about how Israel is heading to hell in a hand basket, God quietly sets him straight. “Do you think you’re all alone, Elijah?” He asks. “Listen, My discouraged friend, I’ve got seven thousand loyal subjects who have never bowed their knee to Baal, never once kissed that false and fallen god. Seven thousand. Yes, I need you, Elijah, but I’ve got a whole army ready to serve. And anyway, Elijah, you have ME. You’ve always had ME. Or did you forget?”

I mentioned a Christian study guide my Adventist denomination was using recently to study this Elijah story. And author Beatrice Neall says this about that still, small voice:

“God does not always show Himself in vigorous ways.”

Sometimes we go to church and we want some earth, wind, and fire. We want some rock-and-roll and an earthquake. If the Lord shakes you up and stirs your soul, fine. But sometimes He speaks in the quiet of midnight, when there’s nothing to drown Him out, no covering noise to muffle your conscience.

Are you listening for Him?