Here's a powerful story to consult when life gets rough.
Elijah the prophet has just learned that one of the most ruthless monarchs of all time, Queen Jezebel (you've probably heard that name before), has sworn to kill him. Elijah is literally undone. He journeys into the desert and sinks down in the meager shade of a lone broom tree and tells God he wants to die. Then sinks into a deep sleep.
Elijah is 'us' in our darkest moods--in those times when we feel threatened, confused and powerless, and the best response we know is unconsciousness--numb, dull-witted escape of one kind and another.
Yet it's right here in Elijah's most lifeless state that LIFE touches him. Literally. While he's sleeping an angel touches him--perhaps has to shake him to wake him up.
Then, when Elijah is conscious enough to hear a voice beyond his own listless depressive looping thinking, the angel, in 4 words, speaks the bleeping secret of life: "Get up and eat."
That gets his attention. Waked him up enough to do one thing--to look, to see what the angel was talking about. Was there really something to eat?
What do you know, there was! Flat bread, baked on a stone. A jug of water too.
Elijah is awake enough now to eat and drink. Though that's about it. He eats the bread, drinks the water, and lies back down to sleep. Apparently this is okay with the angel, who leaves and lets Elijah rest.
Yet the angel returns. Lays a hand on Elijah again. Wakes him up. Says the same thing--but this time adds a crucial bit of wisdom: "Get up and eat--otherwise the journey will be too much for you."
Sometimes it seems to me all the grace of God is encoded in the DNA of this story. Life can get overwhelming sometimes. On our own, in our default states, we're just not up to it. The best we can do is duck and cover.
Until we learn that's NOT the best we can do.
Somehow, as we are touched by Messengers of God, we get waked up, we shake off the dullness, realize our depletedness and our hunger and our thirst, and we find fresh bread and cool water in the desert.
The truth--it's rarely as plain to us as it is in this story of Elijah. Yet this story of food in the desert is just as true for us as it was for Elijah. As we 'open' to the hope, challenge, and beauty of the story--and as we learn to trust it and try it, its reliability proves itself over and over and over.
We get touched by angels and find our bread and water and our rest in many unexpected places and in many different ways. Yet at the center of the story and at the Center of every lone and precious soul we all share in the same offered grace. We just have to 'hear' it, 'trust' it, and 'do' it. We have to remember that it's always possible to lie down hopeless and rise up trusting.
"Get up and eat," says the Messenger of God. "Otherwise the journey will be too much for you."
God give us grace to remember.
