Days of Elijah?

Elijah was a man chosen by God to bring change to the people of Israel. It was a time of religious ceremony, but corruption at every level.  During his life he confronted one of the most powerful men of the region, spent some time alone in the desert and then experienced the challenge of home life with a poor, destitute widow. After a remarkable demonstration of courage and tenacity he faced down the false prophets of his day only to fall into depression and in fear for his life into the wilderness. Alone in a cave he had an encounter with God which started with self-justification and ended with restoration.

Sometime later Elijah returned to confront the king because of his complicity in an act of murder. That confrontation ended with the changed attitude of the king but no lasting benefits. At the beginning of Jesus’ own ministry he referred to those tumultuous times as the ‘days of Elijah’.

In 1994 Robin Mark wrote a song, that has become well known to many, which he called ‘Days of Elijah’. He wrote this as a song of hope against the backdrop of the Rwandan civilian war in which one million people lost their lives. In explaining his song he wrote:

   How do you express the sense that these might be days, not of failure and submission, but of the sort of resilient, declaring, even arrogant trust and hope that Elijah had in his God? That these are not days of God stepping back and allowing the world and the church to roll uncontrolled towards eternity, but rather days when he is calling on his body to make a stand, to offer right praises and to declare that He is totally in control. Well, I reckon you may write the words “These are the days of Elijah”.

We live in a time that once again cries out for hope. There is conflict on every side and injustice carried out in the name of good government. The nation of which I am apart has justified its own actions of sending people seeking refuge to the poorest nations of the world rather than offer them a safe haven, even in the light of condemnation at home and abroad. Daily the media carries threats of terrorist attack and atrocities that have been committed, and there is barely a week that goes by without the report of some natural or man-made disaster that has taken the lives of many.

Against this backdrop, there is faith and confidence that God is in control. Whatever the crisis or the calamity, the indescribable God contains the universe in the palm of his hand. He brought the world into being with a word, he sustains it with a word and will bring it to conclusion with a word. His plans and purposes are beyond our understanding or even imagining and even in the midst of the most atrocious acts of barbarism he remains immovable and steadfast. Tersteegen once wrote that a God that can be comprehended is no God. Or to put it another way, when God becomes small enough for us to understand, he ceases to be big enough to be the God we need him to be.

These are the days of Elijah, God is in control, though the mountains rage, and thunders roar, he is still God. Where there seems to be no hope, there is hope. Together we must make a stand to declare our trust and hope in our eternal God and help to bring about the transformation we desire in our land and beyond by confronting injustice wherever it exists. Let us make a stand for righteousness and refuse to back down in the face of evil