Wednesday, June 19, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Rich Mullins, Elijah and his friend Elisha, facing the whirlwind
Perhaps Elijah wasn’t human after all; at least one commentator is pretty sure he was an angel all along.
The Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind.
Some of us have heard Rich Mullins sing his own song about Elijah, written eleven years before he was killed in the fall of 1997, struck by a semi on a nighttime highway north of Bloomington, Illinois. Rich’s up and down life and multi-layered personality have been well documented, so there’s no chance of him being called an angel.  But he was a prophet. And he and Elijah probably had some talks, late at night, or very early in the morning.
For now, though, the story is about Elijah’s successor, the man who spent seven years with him walking in his footsteps, listening to his stories, learning how Elijah listened for God. Elisha was not a Tishbite but a farmer’s oldest son, on the way to becoming a farmer himself. But his hunger and thirst for Elijah’s version of righteousness, and for Elijah’s way of being with God, never slackened. Elisha took all he learned with Elijah and ran with God along the path set for him. Sixty more years.
Elisha spoke to Elijah. As the Lord (this God who called himself Yahweh) lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you. And so the two went on together toward the Jordan River. Elijah took his mantle, rolled it up and struck the water, which divided, and both of God’s prophets crossed over on dry ground.
They knew the ancient stories, of Moses and the Red Sea, of the chariots chasing the Israelites into the divided water and up the slope to the other side, and of the water crashing in on the pharaoh and his soldiers just as the last old Jew straggled up onto dry land.
“Here,” someone shouts! “Take my hand. The chariots are coming, the chariots are coming.” No music swells, no dark red sky, but a daring rescue even so.
This scene confronts Elisha, who feels deep within how soon he is to lose his hero.
Ask for whatever I may do for you, Elisha, before I am taken away from you.
Elisha kept it simple. In his family his father and mother showed him how to love someone, and he loved Elijah.
May I receive a double portion of your spirit, my father Elijah.
And Elijah promised what he heard God promise for this spiritual son, this man whom he loved.
This is not an easy thing. Still, if you see me taken up from you, your wish will be granted.
They continued to speak with each other as they walked, on this other side of the Jordan. But not for long.
A flaming chariot and fiery horses came between the two, and Elijah flew up to heaven in a whirlwind. My father! My father! And when he could no longer see Elijah, Elisha gripped his own robe and tore it in two.
Elijah’s own mantle had fallen as he was carried away. Elisha picked it up.
Of course!
Wielding the mantle that had fallen from Elijah he struck the water as had his father and said, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?
He shouted to the Lord who sent Elijah to anoint Elisha so many years before. This was the Lord who knew Elisha better than he knew himself. Surely  in that moment Elisha felt despair. He felt alone. Oh so very alone!
But he was not alone.
When Elisha struck the water, it divided. And he crossed over.
Back to the world he had left beside his mentor and his friend. Elisha crossed back on his own, bursting with memories and visions, with hopes that seemed more vulnerable than before.
Will he go back home to Indiana and plow another field? (Rich Mullins grew up in Indiana.)
Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord. Oh how great is your goodness, O Lord which you show in the sight of the children of men.
In the next chapters of the Books of Kings, God manifests his miracles through Elijah. Sometimes testy, sometimes solitary, he listens to God (and at times God listens to him). He speaks God’s words to other men and women. He heals a king of both pride and his leprosy. He raises children from the dead and feeds many with just a loaf or two.
When you give do not let your left hand know what your right is doing. And your Father, who conceived you in love working behind the scenes, and who sees all of what is done in secret, will repay you.
Please take a few minutes to listen to Rich Mullins speak and sing, and read a bit about how his life changed so many. He and Elijah, and Elijah’s friend Elisha – they seem so familiar to me as they walk on lonely highways beside a contested river. They know God is near, inside them even. Sometime, soon and very soon, He will speak.
The Jordan is waiting for me to cross through
My heart is aging I can tell
So Lord, I’m begging for one last favor from You
Here’s my heart take it where You will
This life has shown me how we’re mended and how we’re torn
How it’s okay to be lonely as long as you’re free
Sometimes my ground was stony
And sometimes covered up with thorns
And only You could make it what it had to be
(2 Kings 2, Psalm 31, June 14, Matthew 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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