The Greatest Miracle

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by fear? Something very real has happened, or will happen, and you don’t know how you’ll be able to cope with the loss it will bring?

Elijah also had a very real reason to fear. He had provoked the most powerful woman in the kingdom on such a level that she made a vow to have him slaughtered within 24 hours. After spending years watching the degeneration of Israelite culture and pushing back, knowing that Jezebel would someday come for him, it had happened. So, very reasonably, Elijah ran. But, he ran in despair: “And he asked that he might die, saying ‘It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.’” (vs. 4).

The dramatics are familiar. In Jonah 4:3, after God relents and saves Nineveh, Jonah says, “Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” What would cause these two prophets, chosen by God, who had just witnessed magnificent displays of His power and mercy, to wish they were dead?

We all have selective memories. They’re what allow us to function after traumatic events and move forward in the face of great hardship, but like everything else, they suffer the curse of sin. Elijah was tired. He was scared. And he had allowed himself to forget that the same God who brought fire down on a mountain had a broader plan for His Kingdom. Both Elijah and Jonah were overwhelmed by the frustration of slogging away for God without seeing the results they hoped for – redemption for Elijah, destruction for Jonah – and even though they had just seen big things from God, their view of Him was small.

Their memories were wrong. And ours are regularly wrong. Despair creeps in when we lose sight of the overarching narrative of the Kingdom of God – that He is restoring all things, powerfully, faithfully, and mercifully.