There he came to a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He said, "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thy altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away." And he said, "Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord." And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him, and said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He said, "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thy altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away." And the Lord said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria; and Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel; and Elisha the son of Saphat of Abelmeholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place. And him who escapes from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay; and him who escapes from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him."
Do you ever get a case of the blahs? At times you feel blue or you get "down in the dumps." Are there days when you are depressed, discouraged, or disgusted with life? When a day like that comes, you wear negative glasses so that everything appears negative. You cannot see any good about yourself or about those around you. If so, you are normal, because life consists of ups and downs. There are days when you have a right to feel low. Life is like a sailboat. When the wind blows, one side of the boat is up and the other is down perilously close to the water. When the sailboat turns about, the down side becomes the up side, and the former upside is now downside. Only when the boat is becalmed for lack of wind is the boat on an even keel. So the winds of life make the boat of our lives either on the high or low side.
All of us then have our times when we say, "Blah!" Some of us go too far and stay too long in our depression. The National Institute of Mental Health cites depression as the number one mental health problem in the USA today, costing five billion dollars in hospital and drug expenses. Discouragement and depression come to the best and strongest people. Martin Luther suffered from severe bouts of depression. Pastors today struggle with "burn-out." One in five American ministers has lost his/her zest for the gospel ministry and claims to get little joy from service to God. Depressed, such persons suffer from stress, fatigue, and exhaustion. In our text, we have a classic case of depression in one of the Bible’s greatest prophets, Elijah. He, too, had his high and low moments. On top of Mt. Carmel, he was on the top of things by calling fire from heaven and single-handedly defeating 450 prophets of Baal. It was his finest hour, but when he heard that Queen Jezebel was out to kill him for his victory, he became depressed. He fled to the wilderness at Mt. Sinai and cried to God, "O Lord, take away my life." He felt he was a complete failure and lost his desire to live. Now God had a problem on his hands. How could he get Elijah out of the depths of despair? God may have that problem with you and me. Can God lift us up from our blahs? It so, how does he do it? Our text tells how we can recover from the blahs.
God’s Question
Twice God asks Elijah, "What are you doing here, Elijah? Elijah, why have you run away from your work, your people, and your enemies? What are you doing here all by yourself in this barren place?" As he was asked twice, Elijah answers each time, "I have been very jealous for the Lord."
The first step out of our depression is to understand why we are blue. Elijah’s answer to God’s question reveals at least one reason for his depression. He was expecting too much of himself. He was jealous for God and his cause in Israel. Through his preaching and especially by his dramatic demonstration on Mt. Carmel, he was certain that he would persuade the people to disown their false gods and return to the one and only God, Yahweh. He was a champion of the one true God. Fearlessly, he challenged 450 prophets of Baal on top of Mt. Carmel to prove that their god existed by having their god send fire down from heaven to consume the sacrifice on the altar. Then, Elijah asked God to send fire. His prayer was answered, and the prophets of Baal were killed. Now, Elijah thought, once and for all time the people would know there was only one God and would worship and serve him only. His dream was to cleanse the country of idolatry, but how miserably he failed! Queen Jezebel, the champion of Baal, was out to get him. He had failed, and so what was the use of living?
Expecting too much of oneself was a cause of Elijah’s blahs. This may be the case with us, too. Our goals may be so high as to be impossible of attainment. We expect to perform miracles. We are too idealistic. We get over-committed to good causes and make rigid demands on ourselves. It is like a pastor who tries to please everybody in a congregation. It is absolutely impossible to please everyone. Like Elijah, some may think they can save the world all by themselves. We can take ourselves too seriously by thinking that everything depends on us. Perfectionists are easy prey to discouragement, for no one can reach perfection. Here is a young man who sets out to be a millionaire by age forty. When he fails to reach the goal, he pouts, because he considers himself a failure. A housewife tries to have her house in perfect condition - not a speck of dust on the furniture and everything in place and meals always on time. But the rest of the family comes late to meals and does not pick up cast-off clothing. She is depressed, for it is a hopeless task. Parents, too, may expect too much of their children - to get all As in school and to enter the highest professions. When they have their own desires which are contrary to those of their parents, the parents feel they have failed as parents.
Overcoming the blahs calls for self-understanding. We need to understand that we cannot win every race. We win some and we lose some. Losing is a normal part of life. We need to learn how to lose graciously just as we feel good about winning. The thing for us to remember if we are depressed is that God does not demand nor expect us to succeed but only to be faithful to him and to the task he gives us. Indeed, we need worthy goals and high ideals. A person must have a goal which exceeds his/her grasp. We aspire toward the ideal. We make progress toward the goal, but we may not reach it. For instance, Moses’ goal was to reach the Promised Land, but he was not permitted to enter it, only to see it from Mt. Nebo. All God expects of us is to do our very best whether or not we succeed. Some of the most comforting words Jesus ever spoke were about the woman who anointed him, "She has done what she could." So, if you are subject to depression, ask yourself, "Am I expecting too much of myself? Are my goals too high? Am I willing to do my best and let God take care of the rest?"
Tell Your Troubles
Do you have the blahs because you have troubles? Are they getting you down? After understanding why you are blue, share your troubles with God. This was God’s way of dealing with Elijah’s depression. He asked Elijah, "What are you doing here?" In other words, God asks Elijah to share his concerns. "What is troubling you, Elijah? Tell me about it." Then Elijah opens up and spills the beans. Things are terrible. Things have gone from bad to worse. For one thing, Elijah tells God that his people have been unfaithful to the sacred covenant made at Mt. Sinai by their worship of idols and by their disobedience of the Ten Commandments. No longer do the people say God is their God. Consequently, the people have torn down the altars of God where they worshiped and offered sacrifices. The people have gone to pagan shrines for worship. Not only that, but the people so hate God that they have killed his prophets. Now no one is left to declare the Word of God except Elijah, and the Queen is about to kill him. It is a dark and dreary picture of total defeat.
God helped Elijah overcome the blahs by letting him tell of his problems. It does us good, too, to share our burdens with God and with a friend. By doing so, we get it out of our systems, and the listener helps to carry the burden of concern. This is one way we can help the discouraged. Just lend an interested and sympathetic ear to troubled people. Ann Landers reports that she receives daily thousands of letters from people who need to share their problems. We do not have to say anything nor give advice. It is a service of sympathetic listening. It helps the discouraged person just to cry on a shoulder.
Like Elijah, we have bad news to tell God. A young lad came to the study of his pastor and said, "You know, I’m having a bad day. I was late for school, and then when I got there, I forgot my homework. For that I got a zero. Then I got into a fight with a boy at school and had to stay in during recess. When I got home, my Mom was so mad at me for not cleaning my room, that she spanked me. Then she got a call from Dad who must have said something terrible, for she put me in a chair and told me to stay there. Later, we started to church and had a wreck. When we got to church for choir practice, it was the wrong night for choir." The pastor looked at the boy and asked, "Son, where is your mother now?" "Mother’s in the chapel," he explained. "She is praying and crying."
We also may have a sad and tragic story to tell God about our plight. We may be disgusted with ourselves. One day a mother saw her son standing on a stool looking into the bathroom mirror. Big tears were rolling down his cheeks. Alarmed, she asked, "What’s wrong? What’s the matter? Why are you crying?" Sobbingly he explained, "I just don’t like the way I turned out."
If it is not a sad tale about ourselves, it may be about our society. It is sick, awfully sick. A major crime is committed every two seconds. Three of every four employees steal from their companies. The average American tells three lies a day. Or, maybe we are upset about the church. She is going down numerically. Only half of the American population belongs to a church. Since 1971 the population has grown three times as fast as church membership. And, Lord, what a world we live in! Since 1900, seventy million people were killed in wars. In fact, more people were killed by war in the last eighty years than in any previous eighty-year period of history. What a world that spends over 500 billion dollars annually while millions starve from lack of food!
God listened to Elijah, but now it is time for Elijah to listen to God. What is God going to respond to Elijah’s tale of woe? Is God going to say, "Don’t worry, Elijah. Cheer up. Everything’s going to come out in the wash." But how and where and when does God speak to a person? Elijah had this problem. He looked for God to speak to him in the wrong places. Since God was God with all power and majesty, you would expect God to speak in unusual and spectacular ways. On Mt. Carmel, God answered with a spectacular display of fire falling from the skies to consume the sacrifices. So Elijah looks for God to speak in an earthquake, but there is no message. Then there was a terrific and horrifying fire, but again no word from God. Much to Elijah’s and our surprise, God speaks in a "still small voice." It must have been an inner voice, like the voice of one’s conscience. There was no earsplitting sound like the blast of a rock band which has the amplifiers turned to maximum volume.
To hear God, we must get quiet, or his still, small voice will be crowded out by the noise of the world. Silence is demanded when we want to receive something or when we need to concentrate and keep our minds on the subject. A library demands silence so that readers will not be disturbed. A concert will not begin until all are seated and there is silence. Arturo Toscanini had the programs made of velvet so there would be no rustling of pages when the people turned the pages. In a tennis tournament finals, players hold up serving the ball until everyone is seated and the referee says, "Silence, please!" To hear God’s voice in church, there needs to be silence: "The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the world keep silence before him." A noisy church is not a worshiping church. Years ago, before mechanical refrigeration, ice was stored in warehouses. Sawdust was used on the floor and between blocks of ice to keep them apart. One day, a workman lost his watch and could not find it in the sawdust. At lunch time when the workers left for lunch, all got quiet inside. Then the man put his ear to the floor and heard a tick-tick-tick. Immediately he went to the place and recovered his watch. Likewise, to hear God’s still small voice we must get quiet and listen.
How does God speak to us today? Oral Roberts claimed in 1983 that God spoke to him for seven hours about finishing his City of Faith and ordered Roberts to mail a request for $240 from each person on his mailing list. He claims Jesus spoke to him to tell him that his hospital should be finished so that the cure for cancer could be found. Of course, all things are possible with God, but invariably God speaks in and through his Word, the Bible. There is nothing spectacular about it. To hear God requires no special emotional experience. The still small voice is heard as the Bible is read or as a sermon or lesson is heard. To hear God calls for attentive listening in a quiet environment where there are no distractions.
What does the still small voice say to those with the blahs? What did God say to Elijah? The voice told Elijah that things are not really as bad as he thinks. He wants Elijah to see his situation in a divine perspective. God informs Elijah that he is not the only true believer but there are 7,000 who have not bowed their knees to Baal.
Our depression often results from lack of perspective of the whole as only God can see it. We get so caught up with our problems that we cannot see anything other than our troubles. Charles Allen tells of a college girl who wrote to her parents that she had a skull fracture and concussion from jumping out of her dormitory which had caught on fire. She told of a nearby gas station attendant who came to her rescue and called the fire department and an ambulance. Since her room was burned out, the young man invited her to share his apartment. She accepted and fell in love with him. Now she was pregnant and wanted to marry him. But when she went in for her blood test, she found that she had caught a disease from her boyfriend. She concluded the letter with these words: "Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you there was no dormitory fire. I did not have a skull fracture. I was not in the hospital and I am not pregnant. I am not engaged and I am not infected. There is no boyfriend in my life. However, I am getting a D in history and an F in science. I want you to see these marks in perspective." Seeing the whole in divine perspective helps us to see that not all is lost.
What is the still small voice of God saying to us with the blahs? It is saying, "Be still and know that I am God." Moreover, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." The voice reminds us of Jesus’ words, "Lo, I am with you always." God’s voice assures us that he is still in control of our lives. In the end, it will all work out for our good. "In everything, God works for good to them that love him." God has the whole world in his hands and that includes you and me. With God there is always hope for better days. The final victory is ours through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Get Busy!
God is not yet done with Elijah’s depression. He put Elijah to work. He orders him to leave Mt. Sinai and go on a dangerous and exceedingly important mission. In our text, God tells Elijah, "Go, return ... and you shall anoint ..." Elijah was to crown two kings and enlist Elisha to be his successor. What a job to give a man with the blahs! It was enough to take his mind off himself and his troubles. There was a future and a big work to be done for God. This was the final cure God had for his depressed prophet.
The same works for us. When we are depressed, we usually get to ourselves. We mull over the bad situation. We go over and over how we have failed or how bad and worthless we are. The more we think, the worse it gets. The thing to do is get to work and do something for God and people. A pastor of Louisiana tells about a man who could really fish. Every time he went fishing, he came home with his boat filled with fish. People wondered what his secret was. One day a stranger asked him if he could go with him. They went out early in the morning and went to a lake behind some cypress trees with Spanish moss hanging down. The stranger noticed that the fisherman did not have a fishing pole, just a rusty old tackle box. When they arrived, the fisherman opened the box and took out a stick of dynamite, lit it, and tossed it into the water. An explosion followed and dead fish came to the surface. Then the man put them in the boat. The stranger reached into his hip pocket and showed his credentials as a game warden. Calmly the fisherman again opened his tackle box, got another stick of dynamite, lit the fuse, and handed it to the game warden. Then he asked, "Are you going to fish or are you just going to sit there?" God says to us in our depression, "Are you going to sit there mulling over your troubles or are you going to do what I tell you?"
In a world like this, we need to do what we can to handle our problems. Some do nothing because they claim the problems are too big for one person. Can one fight city haIl? Can one person change the decisions of Congress? Yet, every one needs to do what he/she can. There is a legend about a sparrow lying on its back in the middle of the road. A horseman dismounted and asked the sparrow what in the world it was doing lying in that position. The sparrow explained, "I heard that the heavens are going to fall today." "Oh," said the horseman, "And I suppose your puny little legs can hold up the heavens?" "One does what one can," answered the sparrow. "One does what one can." We may not keep the world from falling apart, but each must do something. We just can’t sit there and watch it fall apart. As God commanded Elijah to do something for him, he commands us to love one another, to witness to his truth, and to preach the gospel to every creature. When we get busy doing these things for God, we will lose the blahs.
A depressed person needs to realize that there are many other people with troubles which may be far worse than one’s own. When we forget our own worries and get interested in helping others with their needs, we will snap out of our discouragement. One time, a pastor had a member whose wife died of a brain tumor and left him with three small children. After the funeral, the pastor told him to call if he needed any help. Shortly after, he called the pastor and said, "Pastor, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I can open my business in the morning. My creditors are calling. My business is mortgaged to the hilt. My wife’s name is on all the papers and she left no will. What am I going to do?" The pastor got in touch with a lawyer in his congregation. The next day the widower called to tell his pastor about the lawyer’s helping him and not charging a cent. When he asked the lawyer why he did it, the lawyer explained, "Look, if we’ve got the same Heavenly Father, why can’t I treat you like my brother without having to explain why I helped you?" It is when we get up and do something to help others that our lives turn into the highs.
Once cured of depression does not mean always cured. As we said at the beginning, life has its ups and downs. The blahs come repeatedly. The best we can do is to make the times between depressions farther and farther apart. At least, at this time we are better off, because God, through the example of Elijah, taught us how to overcome the blahs. When you next feel low and down-and-out, remember how God got Elijah up and going.