After the Fire

From lds.org. Also, I know it's not the portrayal
of the events I discuss, but it's all I've got. :)

After Addra was born, I really struggled emotionally for quite a long while. Looking back, I was probably (definitely) bordering on PPD (if not officially over the border)—but I hid it well enough that I was sort of getting by. In the wake of a new baby, I have felt like I need to do all I can to be better off this time than last. So I’ve been perhaps more receptive than usual to new interpretations of scriptures. It is in this state that I reread the story of Elijah and the still, small voice last week. While the part that we usually read is still beautiful and powerful, I was struck by the verses before and after the famous story (in 1 Kings 19, if you’re reading along). I don’t think this is any definitive interpretation of the story; it’s just the one that makes sense to me right now. I think that’s the great thing about stories and scripture stories in particular—they can reveal different things at different times

In this time period, Elijah is struggling, depressed. He is in hiding, his preaching has only earned him enemies, and he is watching the people he loves destroy themselves by wickedness. So I suspect that when he lies down and asks for death, he doesn’t do it lightly.

An angel comes and tells him to “arise and eat.” And sitting before him, without any effort of his own, is food and drink. This is especially poignant to me right now because after Koa was born, we were so blessed for many days in a row to find food appearing repeatedly on our doorstep, over and over, until our fridge could barely handle the leftovers. Friends and ward members fed my family during a time when what we needed most was rest and sustenance. We did nothing to receive it; it was a tiny but beautiful miracle to us.

Elijah eats, drinks, and rests. Then the angel gives him food and drink again because the journey set out before him is “too great.” And Elijah eats and drinks and goes “in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights” until he gets to Horeb, to commune with God.

I love the beauty of this—Elijah is sustained in his long journey, his struggle. Doesn’t the journey sometimes seem very, very long? But are we not sometimes sustained in that journey by gifts freely given?

So when Elijah arrives at a cave at Horeb, the Lord asks him what he’s doing there, and this is Elijah’s response:

“I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.” (v. 10)

To me, this feels exhausted, lonely, perhaps questioning his mission: “What’s the point? Nothing I’ve done has made a difference.”

And then he experiences all those powerful events—a wind, an earthquake, a fire. Then the voice, still and small, the only thing that the Lord was in. I can’t help feeling like all of this was just another piece to a process that had already begun with the moment he wished for death. Elijah had been supported, strengthened, and now shown that powerful manifestations aren’t necessary to feeling the help and love of the Lord.

But this is not the end of the story. The scripture explains that Elijah gets up after he hears the voice, and he goes to stand in the entrance to the cave. When a voice asks him again what he’s doing, he answers almost exactly the same thing as he’d said before. In other words, Elijah recognizes that his physical circumstances remain unchanged. The manifestations from the Spirit do not suddenly soften the hearts of those who hunt him; they do not resurrect dead prophets and friends; they do not convert the children of Israel.

What did all of this do, then? It strengthened him, it changed his heart. The Lord gives him instructions on what to do next, and here’s what the scripture says, simply, about his reaction: “So he departed thence.”

I hope that simple statement of obedience can someday be said of me.