While this week’s YouTube video focuses on the Gospel, as usual, I can’t pass up an opportunity to talk about the story of Elijah in 1 Kings. This is one of my favorite Old Testament stories. It is quite the epic situation. Elijah is on the run for his life. He has wandered through the wilderness and come close to death. He has been sustained by angels and miraculous food appearing before him. Finally, he has found shelter in a cave on Mount Horeb, the mountain of the Lord.
This mountain is not insignificant. You might know it by another name, Mount Sinai. This is the same mountain where Moses received the Ten Commandments. This is the place of covenant, a place where God came to meet His people. Elijah has had to flee here, not from outsiders, but from his own people. Elijah tells God that, “the Israelites have forsaken your covenant. They have destroyed your altars and murdered your prophets by the sword. I alone remain, and they seek to take my life” (1 Kings 19:10).
Frightened and fearful, Elijah gives his report to God. What would God say? What do you think went through Elijah’s mind when God called him to stand outside the cave, utterly exposed, so God could pass by?
And then we behold both God’s power and His restraint. There is a wind that whips through the mountains, strong enough to crush rocks. An earthquake shakes the world, fire scorches past. Power, yes, such power over all the elements. How small Elijah must have felt. Yet, also perceptive. While these wonders were indeed displays of God’s power, He Himself was not in them.
In a way, and this is my own interpretation, God was giving Elijah one final test. You see, Elijah could have been righteously angry at the Israelites. He could have desired their punishment or at least reprimand for the way they were neglecting their faith. He could have sought revenge for his fellow prophets who had been killed. He could have sought retribution for the pains he himself had suffered. Any of those first displays of power could have swayed Elijah – yes, here is my mighty God who will bring vengeance and judgment down upon the people! But it would have been false, because God was not truly there.
The disposition of our heart affects how we perceive the world. Elijah’s heart was not full of anger, revenge, or despair. Through it all, he had remained faithful to God’s friendship and obedient to God’s will. This is why it is only in the smallest breeze, a still, small wind, that he hid his face in his cloak and went out to meet his God.
So often, we chase after what we believe will make us happy only to be disappointed. The disposition of our hearts can lead us in all manner of directions. The Bible talks quite a bit about our heart. One of the recurring themes in the season of Lent is the notion of allowing God to soften our heart, to give us a new heart. This new heart is one that is soft and clean, rather than hard and stoney.
A clean heart create for me, God;
Psalm 51:12
renew within me a steadfast spirit.
I am aware it isn’t Lent, but the message is timeless. God is always in what’s best for us, and what’s best for us is always God. This doesn’t necessarily mean a life of solitude and a diet of brown bread and water. And thank God! A person with a clean heart, a soft heart, is one that God can shape and form into who he or she God intended them to be. Another word for this is holiness. Holiness is a universal call – each one of you reading this, as well as the person sitting next to you, as well as your neighbor down the street, even that person who cut you off on the highway – all of us are called to holiness.
Pope Francis’ excellent exhortation, Gaudete et exultate, is all about the universal call to holiness. Check this quote out:
The important thing is that each believer discern his or her own path, that they bring out the very best of themselves, the most personal gifts that God has placed in their hearts (cf. 1 Cor 12:7), rather than hopelessly trying to imitate something not meant for them. We are all called to be witnesses, but there are many actual ways of bearing witness. Indeed, when the great mystic, Saint John of the Cross, wrote his Spiritual Canticle, he preferred to avoid hard and fast rules for all. He explained that his verses were composed so that everyone could benefit from them “in his or her own way”. For God’s life is communicated “to some in one way and to others in another”.
Gaudete et exsultate, 11.
So good, right? Ok, I know this has been a longer post so I’ll leave it here. I would encourage you to read over that quote again though and think about what gifts God has specially and specifically given to your heart. How are you using them? This really is a beautiful exhortation, though I wouldn’t read it all in one sitting. Take it a paragraph at a time. It’s really worth it.
Daily Graces 