Rest (#31 days to Sanctuary day 27)

Where is day 26, you ask?  Well, we all need a break sometimes.  I'm finding the discipline of daily blogging to be both helpful and tedious, depending on the day.  I don't feel I have enough insights to share something profound each day (or perhaps even each week), although the practice does motivate me to stop and reflect. Sometimes, though, what I need most is a nap.

So on this day, I encourage you to find rest.  Find time to stop your busy mind, your endless to-do list, and the ceaselss motion that keeps you on the go.  Curl up with a book, or curl up and nap.  Take time to breathe deeply and let the noise inside quiet.  Take a walk in the woods and be surrounded by a different kind of noise, silence punctuated by reminders of life.  Stop and listen for that still small voice of God.

1 Kings 19:1-13

Elijah Flees from Jezebel

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. ²Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, ‘So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.’ ³Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.

4 But he himself 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.’ ⁵Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ ⁶He 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. ⁷The angel of theLord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ ⁸He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. ⁹At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ ¹⁰He answered, ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.’

Elijah Meets God at Horeb

11 He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for theLord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹²and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. ¹³When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’