“Seven times Elijah said, Go back.”— 1 King 18:43.
It was one of those great memorable V-Days except that this time it is on a mountain called Carmel. Elijah, the prophet, had just won a most decisive spiritual battle ever fought over Baal and his prophets. The next event to follow was the falling of showers of blessings from Yahweh signified by the rain that was to come. But before it strikes, Elijah sends out his unnamed servant, a young man who was with him, to go and look toward the sea and come back with a report to him on what he would see.
The young man goes there six times. But in each of those times he sees nothing. Every time he reports to his master, ‘there is nothing there’! And each time after he reports, Elijah sends him back to look toward the sea again and again until on his seventh time, something happens! His eyes now behold “A cloud as small as a man’s hand…rising from the sea” and he jumps with joy to report it!
When Elijah hears the report, forthrightly, he sends the young man to the King (Ahab) to warn him of an impending heavy downpour of rain. And within no time,
there it was! Cats and dogs raining! Mind you, this comes against a background of three and a half years of “filthy” drought and you need to mark that!
Yup! I understand that the Bible often associates the East with heaven or where God is. At least, that is what some scholars claim and you can check with them, too.But I would like to suggest that in simple terms Elijah was telling the young man to look up to Yahweh and see what He was up to. And so what do we make of this?
Sometimes we need to look toward the East for seven good times before some spiritual droughts that ravage our lives are banished by an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Very often we are too hurried to see what God has in store for us. We lack the patience needed to see “the clouds of blessings” God has up His sleeves for us; and when we do, our faith only sees but “small clouds” in God’s big skies and we are even not very sure what those “small clouds” on a big sky-iery screen could do in the hands of the Al Mighty Yahweh, anyway. Therefore, most of us protest and leave the Elijahs with their gods on “Mount Carmels” alone as we dash on to our preferred lives.
We hardly take the time and courage needed to listen to what God is saying to us or is trying to show and teach us when He presents a blank screen with no signal of hope on it in our lives. Very often we are too blinded by our own hurried lifestyles to see what God is presenting on those blank screens. Like the servant of Elijah, all we see is nothing in the ways of the gods and so we leave the “Old time religion” in one way or the other because it no longer makes sense to us and it is a time waster for busy souls that we are in a busy society like our postmodern world. Religion seems to be outdated anyway.
Is it a surprise then, that our lives are full of frustrations and disappointments? And for those of us who still profess the Name and affiliate ourselves to the gods, can we justly blame the gods for the lack of rains in our lives? Who should we blame when our families and marriages are falling apart and there is social and spiritual dearth everywhere around us? Not the gods, for sure!
Perhaps, this“Elijah-and-the-blank- sky” story should set us thinking twice. Spiritual blessings often require patience. It may be that some of us are yet to cultivate that patience of going back “there” before the presence of the Holy One of Israel seven times until His blank screens begin to rain and speak new sign languages we can understand!
And so what shall we say? Have you been waiting for something from the LORD and it seems He doesn’t care to answer you? Is He beaming you a blank screen that is frustratingly testing your faith? Are you on the verge of quitting it because you are seeing nothing of substance so far and you think your resilience is being taken for granted by the gods? ?
Don’t exit; don’t shut your PC down. Today, “Go back” on your knees and see what God is planning for you in your life. Perhaps you need a seventh visit to His throne of grace before your breakthrough becomes a reality and your eyes open to see some cloud of hope! Go back! Wait thou, my friend on that God who cannot lie even as you pray like me today:
Lord, forgive me today for my unbelief and impatience. Give me today the faith I need to see what the scoffer and those who do not know you don’t see on your seemingly “blank skies”. Open my eyes so that I may always see, even if it means but just a small cloud of Your presence, where others don’t, that I may proclaim your greatness to the nations. Amen.
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