Reverend
Debbie Cato
1 Kings 19:4-8
Fairfield
Community Church
August
4, 2024
Let us pray: Holy
God, Open our ears and
humble our hearts as we approach your Word read and proclaimed today. May we
listen, discern and follow the path you intend for us. Amen.
It is Enough,
Lord!
“It is enough, now, O
Lord.” It is enough.
Or maybe you can recall a time when you looked at your community, your city, your nation, the world, and asked God, “Haven’t we had enough?” We trust in God, and yet we also wonder, how much is enough to bear, enough to learn what God is trying to teach us?
Enough with the gun violence, God. We can’t take one more school shooting. We can’t bear one more innocent death.
Enough with the warring madness, God. We can’t bear any more babies dying or people taken hostage or hospitals bombed.
Enough with the natural disasters, the floods, the wildfires, the Category 5 early-season hurricanes and the deadly heat waves, God. The earth is boiling and praying its own desperate prayers.
Enough with the anger and political divisiveness, God. We can’t bear any more leaders whose rhetoric fuels rage and spills into violence. We can’t bear another dinner or Sunday school class or committee meeting where we tiptoe around each others’ views, walking the knife’s edge of our political divisions.
Elijah’s prayer of desperation arises out of a wilderness of suffering. He is in Beersheba, on the run from Queen Jezebel, who wants to kill Elijah for killing the prophets of her god, Baal. Elijah had challenged the followers of Baal to call on him to build a fire of sacrifice. They called all day to their god Baal, but nothing happened. Elijah called on God and immediately a fire began burning. To make a long story short, Queen Jezebel was livid and was determined to kill Elijah. So Elijah went to the wilderness to hide. But Elijah had reached the end of his rope.
No one can run forever. Not even a prophet of God. Elijah came to the end of his physical, emotional and spiritual rope. He can’t go one step further. He collapses under a broom tree and prays for God to take his life. It’s enough, he prays. It’s enough Lord.
It’s in these lowest of low moments when we learn to be honest with ourselves and with God, when we are finally forced to confess that we can’t do it all, that we aren’t completely self-reliant, that we could use some help.
In our scripture passage today, it’s important to notice the kind of help that Elijah did and did not receive from God. An angel appears to Elijah to give him food and drink — but not to answer Elijah’s prayer to die. The angel didn’t come to throw Jezebel off Elijah’s trail. King Ahab’s evil queen was still in hot pursuit. The angel didn’t magically and instantaneously make
Elijah’s life better or transport him to an earthly paradise where his worries would vanish. Rather, the angel came to give Elijah just enough sustenance so he could carry on.
I have a friend who struggles with depression. There are days she finds herself unable to do anything more than just lie in bed. In these moments when life itself is simply too much, her counselor has advised her to think smaller, to only consider what the next right step might be. For my friend, lying in bed, the next right step might be pulling the covers off her body, or swinging her feet to the floor, or walking to the bathroom to wash her face. In the face of her overwhelming depression, these small steps are miracles in themselves. They do not heal my friend’s depression. Rather, they serve as “just enough.”
Last Sunday we prayed for the family of the 13-year-old girl that drowned in Clear Lake. Her family was boating and having a wonderful time on a beautiful day. Addyson – that’s her name - jumped off the boat to swim and she never came up from the water. Jessica knew Addyson. Clara knew Addyson. Jessica knows the Shafer family. Addyson has danced at Clara’s dance studio since Addyson was 4 years old. She helped in Clara’s dance class this past year. Jessica said to me, “That’s enough! That’s enough tragedy and loss and sadness. How does her family go on after that?”
I imagine the citizens of Paradise California are saying “It’s enough”! as they watch their community burn again. I imagine the firefighters out in the heat and the danger all across the West are saying, “It’s enough! We are out of energy. We are exhausted. It’s enough.”
“It is enough, now, O Lord, it is enough!” From running for his life to admitting his desperation in prayer to God to making the most of the resources he was granted to reach safety, we see how Elijah is transformed by a God who gives us enough.
We may not be given as much as we want or what wethink we need. But God gives us enough to take the next step. It is enough. It is enough, we might hear Elijah pray, as he makes his way through the wilderness, step by small step, to the mount of God.
It is enough. It is enough, we might pray with Elijah as we face our own suffering. We, too, are strengthened by God. We, too, are given enough to move forward.
It is enough, now, O Lord, it is enough. Amen[i]
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