By any account it was a tough day at the office for Elijah (1Kings 18). First there was the day-long show-down with the prophets of Baal. Interesting odds. 1 vs. 850.
Then there was the waiting for God to come through, to burn up the drenched bull. God came through and that led to the slaughter of the false prophets. So much blood.
But the day was not over. There was to be the encounter with Ahab. And the prophecy of rain when there was no rain cloud in sight. The rain came and Elijah had to out run Ahab’s chariot back to Jezreel. Like I said, a hard day at the office. A couple of lifetimes’ drama squeezed into 12 hours.
Since Elijah was a man just like us (James 5:17), he was tired. Very tired. And it showed. 1Kings 19 records classical symptoms of fatigue and burnout:
1. Fear. (v.3) 2. Depression. (v.4) 3. Isolation. (v.10) 4. Loss of faith.
What was God’s reaction to His tired servant? Did He ask Elijah to pray more? Fast? No. Essentially, God’s prescription for His exhausted servant was a regime of sleeping and eating (1 Kings 19:5- 8). Later, God would give Elijah a reality check and fresh instructions. But God’s first response was to let a tired man sleep.
I have preached on this passage often. Mainly because I have gone down the Elijah road often. But also because I see fatigue endemic in modern society. Ask about anyone you know how he or she feels and you know what his or her answer will be. For a time we fool ourselves that we are just going through a particularly demanding week, and that next week will be better. Soon we come to accept that constant fatigue is part of life in the new millennium.
It would appear that the very machines that were supposed to aid us and improve the quality of our lives are the very things driving us deeper and deeper into fatigue. With the advent of the electric light bulb, night is no longer a time to shut down and rest. And the World Wide Web means that we can work 24/7 if we want to. More and more of us feel we have to in the highly competitive global economy.
The thing is, even when we have time to ourselves, it is still hard to sleep. Often we worry about what may be and we conjure up images of worse case scenarios. So not only are our lives occupied, they are also preoccupied with things yet to be which may never be. Indeed in some companies paranoia is part of the company culture.
What is perhaps more tragic is that church life is no source of respite. More and more churches are functioning on the basis of management by objectives, defining themselves and their members by their productivity. I have lost count of the number of Christians who have told me that often they cannot tell the difference between their companies and their churches in terms of the demand to perform.
In the world and in the church then, rest gets no respect. And most of us are running around with a serious rest/sleep debt. Does this worry you? It should.
In his book SLEEP THIEVES, Stanley Coren estimates that “Each year, sleep-related errors and accidents cost the United States over $56 billion, cause nearly 25,000 deaths, and result in over 2.5 million disabling injuries.”
Why should this surprise us? Every time we tinker with God’s pattern we reap the consequences. The creation pattern was 6 days of work, 1 day of rest. It is not a matter of pitting rest vs. work but rather an embracing of the intimate relationship between work and rest.
We were meant to live our lives with a rhythm of work and rest, work and rest. Of course we can only live like that if we trust that God is on His throne and is taking of us.
If the weight of our lives is in our own hands, than we will be driven by fear and we need to work as hard as we can to remain in the game. But if we really believe that we have a heavenly Father who is watching out for us than we can work when it is time to work, and rest when it is time to rest. We can be free to get the rest we need.
If anyone had reason to worry and lose sleep, it should have been David in Psalm 3. He was surrounded by myriad of foes. Yet he could hit the sack at night and sleep because he was secure in the care and love of his sovereign Lord. “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, for the Lord sustains me.” (v.5 NRSV)
As we face the end of year, which means holiday time in my part of the world, I hope you will make time for the rest you need.
And maybe our churches need to set aside days for eating and sleeping alongside days of fasting and praying. In the times we live in, both will require faith.
Your brother, SooInn Tan