Eat, drink, sleep

Elijah was afraid; he got up and fled for his life . . . He went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights . . . 1 Kings 19:1–9

Elijah is often described as the greatest of the prophets. But here we catch a glimpse of the fact that he was as human as you and me. The most famous parts of this story are his outstanding ‘success’ story on Mount Carmel where he calls down fire from heaven, and the episode immortalized in the famous hymn O Lord and Father of Mankind, in which he hears the ‘still small voice of calm’. The mountainside experience may have proved him right, but it also earned him as many enemies as friends. And, under threat of his life, he ran for cover into the desert. And all alone, in the middle of nowhere, he falls down under a tree. He’s exhausted, completely lost his perspective, doubts everything he has ever done, and in such despair that he begins to think he’d be better off dead.

What do you expect God to do, to put him back together? Call a strategy meeting to regroup, and resolve the situation? Call a counsellor to talk about his childhood? Or perhaps engage in some intensive holy practice like fasting and prayer? Will excellent management skills, or superior spiritual wisdom, meet the day?

God will eventually speak to Elijah — and when he does, it will be on another mountain top, this time without any theatrics (and notably, not in the fire!). But not yet. Not yet. The last thing an exhausted, depressed, lonely person needs is solitude, fasting and prayer.

Elijah has got beyond helping himself, so God takes the initiative — and sends what Elijah needs in priority order: food, water and sleep, personally delivered along with some kind and reassuring words. God is, perhaps, not the stoic we sometimes imagine. Given that God expressed himself most fully in incarnation, in flesh and blood, we should probably not be surprised by this, yet it seems we are slow to believe that God meets us within the bounds of normal human experience.

Eat, drink, sleep. Not ‘eat, drink and be merry’, mind you: this is not a mandate for careless hedonism! — but it is a recognition that the human mind and body do not function well on isolation, sleep deprivation, dehydration and poor nutrition.

I’ve felt pretty low lately, for an assortment of reasons that are quite trivial by comparison to Elijah’s. Nevertheless, the message is the same. The still, small voice is impossible to hear when you’re exhausted and sleep-deprived. We have to look after ourselves, body and soul.

Eat. Drink. Sleep.