The reading this week used in prison. Elijah went a day’s journey into the desert, until he came to a broom tree and sat beneath it. He prayed for death saying:”This is enough, O LORD!
Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”
The desert a place no man controls! A place where nature can wraps it’s arms around man with an embrace of the reality of life and death. A place where the sun and wind can penetrate the soul of the man! A place where the spirit of the man can cry out from the depth’s of the soul where lie hidden the burdens and wounds inflicted from life and can be set free to the ears of the wind. A place where the voice of God who hears is carried on the wind can speak to the soul of the man bypassing his stiff neck and hardened heart and penetrate his soul.
He lay down and fell asleep under the broom tree,
but then an angel touched him and ordered him to get up and eat. Elijah looked and there at his head was a hearth cake
and a jug of water.
After he ate and drank, he lay down again,
but the angel of the LORD came back a second time,
touched him, and ordered,
“Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!”
He got up, ate, and drank; then strengthened by that food,
he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.
Forty – the extraordinary amount of time it takes before the heart and neck of man can be healed of stubbornness of a self appointed God!
Crushed and broken is the bread of life that man might have life more abundantly!