Elijah's Depression

Elijah was one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament. When Jesus appeared on the Mount of the Transfiguration, he appeared with Moses and Elijah on either side of him. Elijah was right there beside Jesus in God's presence. Isn't that where we want to end up too?

So it may come as a surprise to you that Elijah the prophet suffered from depression. I am defining depression as a feeling that is so bad or intense that it makes you want to die. Elijah just wanted to lie and down and die. He felt that bad.

Let me read off a short list of other famous people who have suffered from depression:

    John Adams, 2nd President of this country

    Queen Elizabeth II

    Abraham Lincoln

    Angelina Jolie

    JK Rowling

    Winston Churchill

    Oprah Winfrey

    

These are smart people. These are beautiful people. These are gifted people. These are people who have had everything to live for and yet, at moments in their lives, they felt like lying down and just dying. And Elijah the prophet was one of them.

    

    

Elijah had just shown up all the prophets of Baal. His offering to God was consumed in a burst of flame in front of hundreds of eyewitnesses, while their animal carcasses just sat there wet and abandoned. People were believing in God and that Elijah was his prophet. Elijah had had the prophets of Baal killed and, after an immense drought, God had brought rain down on the land. You would think that Elijah would have relished the victory, basked in his win. But often, right after a mountain top experience is when you fall the hardest. No sooner had he shown up the prophets of Baal then Jezebel the queen threatened his life. She sent him a message.

    

    "I will kill you by this time tomorrow..."

    

I would definitely categorize that as hate mail. And there is nothing like hate to make you feel bad. Elijah was afraid.  He ran far away and begged God just to let him die. He felt awful. Depression covered him like a black cloak.

    

Winston Churchill described a black dog that would consume him at times in his life.

 Abraham Lincoln had such melancholy and darkness that he once said, "I am now the most miserable man living."

    

Depression is not something that happens to bad people or weak people or even lost people. God does not love you any less if you feel like dying sometimes. It seems to be a struggle that some of us have to endure, a cross to bear. 

    

God would not let Elijah die. He gave Elijah food. Just like any of us would do to care for someone we love who is suffering and wants to die. He urged Elijah to live. And God led Elijah alone to a cave. Elijah sat there in that cave for awhile. He just let himself feel bad. And out of this period of great sadness and desperation, inside that dark cave, Elijah heard the voice of God.

    

Strange how God often speaks when we feel the worst. It is as if our moments of desperation open something up inside us, some kind of a space for God to speak. Depression can crack you wide open. Someone once told me that the valleys are fertile, where everything grows. But we all want to be on the mountaintop, to have mountaintop experiences. But nothing grows up there. No, greatness is often made in the valleys, in the challenges, and difficulties of life. 

    

And before Elijah heard God, he heard everything else. He had to hear a whole bunch of things that were not God before he heard God. He heard wind and earthquake and fire, but they were not God. And that is how it goes with solitude and prayer. If you want to listen for God, you must be willing to hear some other stuff too. You may need to wade through quite a lot of noise and nonsense and sadness and feeling like a failure and anger and regret in order to find God's voice. Most of us, when we hear the worries and the noise that crowd our minds, we just want to give up and end the attempt. But Elijah stayed in that cave and continued to listen. Until finally he heard something that was God.

    

The words for what Elijah heard in the ancient Greek are best translated as this...eloquent silence.

 

He heard God in the sound of eloquent silence.

And when Elijah emerged from this encounter, he was no longer lost. He got his purpose back. His life become clear again and he went on to be a prophet once more.

The research psychologist Anders Ericsson ran an experiment with violinists at the Music Academy in West Berlin. He had the teachers divide the violinists into three categories: the best who could make a career of it, those who were good, and those who could maybe become teachers but who did not have great talent. And then he asked them all how they practiced. He found a profound difference in the three groups. All three spent over 50 hours a week in musical activities but the great violinists spent most of their musical time practicing alone. 3.5 hours a day for the best group and 1.3 hours a day for the worst group. They spent time alone, listening to themselves play. They were not afraid to be alone.

In fact, in her book Quiet, Susan Cain writes that the most pivotal moments of invention, creativity and life-changing discovery happened not in groups but by individuals throughout history who were not afraid to be alone and to listen to the sound of eloquent silence.

Depression drove Elijah into a cave where silence awakened his soul. Perhaps our pain can become a gift to us if it motivates us to listen. It takes enormous courage, even desperation, to be willing to stay in the midst of your noise and listen beyond it for God. 

I urge you to find time to be silent. I urge you to listen. Everything in our lives tells us to rush and fill the quiet with noise. Turn on the radio, the TV, fill your schedule, go to sleep- anything to keep you from the silence. For it terrifies us to be quiet. We may end up realizing that we too feel great sadness or anger or depression. If that happens, remember that you are in good company. Remember Elijah and don't be afraid to continue to listen, for God can be found on the other side of all that pain and confusion. So bear it, listen to your worries and distractions and noises and look deep within. There is a well of life that runs within you. It was created at your baptism. God waits for you in the silence.

    

    

Finding a Prophet

In the midst of the financial crisis of 2008-9, a Korean businessman killed himself after loosing most of a $370 million dollar investment. His wife wrote, "When the nations's stock market index fell below 1,000, he stopped eating and went on a drinking binge for days and finally decided to kill himself." His wife could do nothing. She had never had the courage to tell him that his love of money had gotten out of hand. How could she start now? She had never told him the truth before. And he had no prophets in his life. No one told him the truth.

We all need a prophet in our lives.

Dewey Michelin wants me to tell you his story. He is very open about what happened to him. He hopes that his story will help others. 

Dewey was my Senior Warden in my very first church. Everyone loved and respected him. He told us all that he had some health issues. TIA's, Rosatia in his face. It took me six months to realize what was really going on. Dewey was drinking himself to death.

Every evening, when he returned from work, his wife would greet him at the door with a glass of scotch in her hand. And his drinking began.

Once at realized what was going on with Dewey, I convinced him to go with me to a rehabilitation center for an appointment. Dewey was convinced that he did not have a problem. It was at the rehabilitation center that we met a prophet.

First a young woman came in with a clipboard. She smiled and checked off items as Dewey answered her quiet ions. Height, weight, how much he drank, she checked it all off as if there was nothing wrong at all. When she left, Dewey looked at me as if to say, "See, this is nothing!"

Then the prophet came in. He was short with glasses. He had worked as a doctor for years in this place. He did not sit behind a desk but pulled his chair right up to Dewey and looked him in the eye.

"Mr. Michelin," he said. "Do you want to live a long life?"

"Yes, I do." 

"Then you need to know that you are poisoning your body. At this rate, you will be dead in two years. All of your physical ailments have been caused by your drinking. The alcohol is killing you. I recommend that you check yourself into this treatment facility immediately."

Dewey was furious. He stood up and walked out. But he was a good man. And he did hear the prophet. A few months later, he checked himself into rehab. He has been sober now for about fifteen years. I had the honor of renewing his marriage vows with his wife because they wanted to be married without alcohol.

In the time of the Old Testament, a prophet was a person who spoke radical truth on behalf of God. Elijah was a prophet. He told it like it was. He was not afraid to tell the truth right to people's faces. And he made a lot of people mad.

Elijah was prophet during the reign of one of the most corrupt kings of Israel. The King's name was Ahab and he was married to a woman named Jezebel. Jezebel was so sinister and so sick that her name speaks of evil to this day. She was a big fan of a kind of worship that involved killing children to sacrifice to the God Baal. Archeologists uncovered a gravesite in Megiddo in modern-day Israel just a few decades ago. At the site, there was once a temple to Ashtoreth, the consort goddess of Baal. Just a few steps from the ruins of this temple there was a cemetery where many jars were found containing remains of infants who had been sacrificed in the temple. This was bad stuff, this was evil. This was a good who loved for people to kill babies in her honor. And Jezebel loved to worship in this way. She was a woman with no conscience.

Jezebel was married to a weak man. Her husband, the King of Israel, was like a spoiled child. When he could not buy the vineyard next to his residence, he went to bed and sulked. His wife told him to get up, that she would acquire the field.

Jezebel writes letters from her husband and initiates a fast, which occurred only after a great crime was committed. Then she paid false witnesses to lie about the owner of the vineyard, claiming that he had publically defamed the king. The owner of the vineyard was taken outside and stoned to death, and his vineyard was given to the king.

This all would have transpired without repercussion if Elijah the prophet had not been alive. No one would have dared to be honest with the king. They could be killed just as the owner of the vineyard had been. But Elijah is a prophet. He hears of the crime and he speaks out against it. Elijah tells the truth about what happened. That is what a prophet does. A prophet tells the truth, no matter what the cost. Elijah says to the king, "you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord."

You have sold yourself.

You have cashed in your integrity to protect your pride. You have forgotten who you are. You have sacrificed the truth....you are sick and you will die.

Ahab does repent. He tells God he is sorry, though the Bible does not say that he returns the vineyard...and God does not punish him, at least not in his own lifetime. But if there had been no Elijah, Ahab would never have faced the truth about who he was. And if there had been no doctor, Dewey would not have faced the truth about who he was.

I don't know about you, but I need a prophet in my life. I need that faithful and brutally honest friend who will tell me if I have made the wrong choice, chased after false gods, or heaven forbid, sold my soul for success or glory. We all must have a prophet if we are to survive in this crazy world.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean that we all need a critic. I am not talking about someone who incessantly speaks negatively to you. I am talking about someone who does not gossip or tell falsehoods but tells the truth to you, directly to you and only you, out of love.

Who is your prophet? The person does not have to be perfect but they have to be a truth-teller who is not afraid to give it to you straight. Someone who is not afraid to hurt your feelings. I do not think that your spouse can be your prophet or your best friend or your parents. No, a prophet must have some distance, some perspective on your life.

I am a great believer in spiritual counseling, in therapy and in coaching. Sometimes paying someone to be objective can be the healthiest thing out there. There must be someone in your life who will tell you the truth about who you are and what you are doing. It is essential.

The hardest thing to do is to be a prophet for someone else, to tell someone something hard. But you and I are called to be prophets. If you are only complimenting people and telling them what they want to hear, then you are not fully living into the call that God has for you. You should be making people mad rarely regularly. For we followers of Jesus must be prophets too. We too must follow in the steps of Elijah.

So find yourself a prophet, a prayerful person who will tell your the truth. And then seek to be a prophet for someone else. That is one of the ways that we can follow Jesus.