Some people may be wondering what is next for us as a church now that the ‘high’ of the Open Day on 3rd July is over. Naively we may expect to remain on a spiritual mountain for some time with God’s blessing washing over us. Somehow I don’t think that is the way life works…
In 1 Kings 19, we find Elijah not revelling in the victory he has seen God perform at Mount Carmel (recorded in the previous chapter) but lying under a broom tree in despair, asking God to take his life. We may wonder at the extremes of this emotion (if God was able to deal with the prophets of Baal by sending fire on the sacrifice, surely He is able to deal with the king Ahab and queen Jezebel and their threat to kill Elijah?), but in reality, life is full of climaxes that are followed by anticlimaxes.
Some of this is perfectly natural. Maya Angelou said that ‘achievement brings its own anticlimax.’ C.S. Lewis (in ‘The Screwtape Letters’) talks about life having ‘a series of troughs and peaks’. Elijah, in 1 Kings 18, has risen to the challenge and has experienced the body’s natural hormone, adrenaline, coursing through his veins. When adrenaline is produced in the body, it stimulates the heart-rate, dilates blood vessels and air passages, produces a rise in blood sugar, gives increased metabolic rate and prepares us for action. Adrenaline is naturally produced in high-stress or physically exhilarating situations. It’s commonly called the ‘fight or flight’ hormone, equipping us to either run away from the trouble or to stand and fight. It’s God’s provision for us in times of need.
But when the stressful situation is reduced, what happens? The ‘parasympathetic reaction’ kicks in and the body returns to normal. It needs to: we can’t sustain life at the level adrenaline provides and it’s dangerous if we become addicted to adrenaline or think that life is always lived on the mountain top…
God provides for Elijah in 1 Kings 19. He uses miraculous means (sending an angel to Him and using nature in different ways), but the means He uses vary according to the situation and on this occasion, the very mundane provision of sleep and food is recorded as being just as important as the revelation of God Elijah experiences. Let’s not scorn the basics.
God comes to Elijah afresh, listening to his woes, giving him the space to tell God how he feels (such a privilege available to us all!) He gives Him the one thing He has promised all His people – His presence. But this time, God’s presence does not come with great thunder. God is not in the wind. He’s not in the earthquake. He’s not in the fire. He comes in a ‘gentle whisper’, in a ‘still, small voice’.
We need to seek God’s presence above everything else. C.S. Lewis says that as long as we live on earth, ‘periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty.’ We need to recognise that and seek God at all times.
“It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it [man] is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be,” C.S. Lewis writes. So if you are feeling that your life is in a ‘trough period’ right now, if you are feeling the anticlimax of months of hard work at St Mark’s, don’t despair. God is still with you and His gentle whisper is just as capable of sustaining you as His loud shouts. Even when you cannot hear Him at all, He is still there. (Hebrews 13:5, Matthew 28:20)