The Journey is Too Much for You. Get up and Eat

1Kings 19

5 Then he lay down and fell asleep under a broom tree; but behold, there was an angel touching him, and he said to him, “Arise, eat!” 6 And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a round loaf of bread baked on hot coals, and a pitcher of water. So he ate and drank, and lay down again. 7 But the angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him, and said, “Arise, eat; because the journey is too long for you.” 8 So he arose and ate and drank, and he journeyed in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.

The story here tells of the prophet Elijah. He is running away into the wilderness, fleeing from the wrath of deadly royalty, King Ahaz and Queen Jesabel. Elijah had just got into a theological death match with the prophets of Ba’al. He had called their bluff and said, if Ba’al is god, he will answer you and ignite the offering altar with fire. So the prophets of Ba’al spent all day crying out to their deity, but no one answered. Then Elijah, after the false prophets exhausted themselves in the Palestine sun, takes some 5 gallon buckets of water and pours it all over the altar. He prays one simple prayer asking God to show that he is King of Israel and that he is turning the people’s hearts back to him.

Then suddenly, fire careens out of the sky and engulfs the altar, licking up all the water, proving without a shadow of a doubt that YHWH is the true God and true King. It was the emotional high point of Elijah’s ministry. He was faithful and the Lord had answered. He was a hero of the faith.

But all this changed in the blink of an eye. Suddenly the tables had turned. The royal family, devout Ba’al worshippers, were now seeking out Elijah to capture, torture, and kill him. So Elijah does a 180 degree turn and high tails it for the deserts of the south. He flees for his life, knowing that this could very well be the last time he sees his homeland. He runs to the wilderness, the place where God tabernacled with his people so long ago in the days of Moses. He goes out in the desert and like this great prophet of old, he desires to die there. He falls under a broom tree, and like Hagar and Ishmael in Gen. 21, he thinks that he might die. In fact, he welcomes this idea. He prays that it might happen. The great days of the past are gone. There is nothing more to look forward to.

But just as God in the past worked wonders in the wilderness, providing water and food for the Hebrew people as they dwelt in the wilderness or like Hagar and Ishmael as they were dying of thirst, here too God intervenes and provides food and water. Why? Because as the angel says, “the journey is too much for you.”

So many times we come to a point where we think the journey is too much. There have been great times, but the difficult times seem to outweigh all the good that has happened. The ups and downs are too much and the unknown is bewilderingly dark.

Here God intervenes. Giving us the daily bread. The word of encouragement. The believer that sends a text. The prayer from a sister. The meal that shows up on a door step. God uses his people to show he has not abandoned us. He loves us and will never leave us nor forsake us. The journey is too much for us. It is. But we are not, nor will we ever be, alone.

I pray that you and I may be the hands and feet of Christ. Handing to one another the bread of Christ, through sacrificial love, compassion, and commitment to those that God loves.

And to those that are facing the journey knowing that it is indeed too much for you, God is telling you to get up and eat. Take the comfort of Christ that is shown through his body, through the fellowship of believers. Reach out to those that love you and have a commitment to you.

And together, may we show the love of Christ to each other and to the lost world around us.

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