What are You Doing Here?

Elijah has just demonstrated the sovereign authority of Jehovah when the apostate queen Jezebel orders his execution.  His performance (or rather that of the Lord God) has called her spiritual claims to authority into question, and thus Elijah has been condemned.  And that paragraph sounds like a textbook.

He flees to the wilderness, leaving even his servant behind (lack of trust, perhaps?  desire for a martyr's end?), and asks the Lord to take his life.  The greatest of triumphs has lead to his apparent conclusion.  For what should he live?

The Lord feeds him, and then Elijah fasts and makes a pilgrimage to the mountain called Horeb, where the Lord met Moses so many years ago.  The Lord speaks to him in a cave there, and asks "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Elijah explains what has happened.  Then the Lord promises to pass by the cave, and tells Elijah to come before Him.

Many of us begin to recognize the story here.  First, there is a wind that breaks apart the stones.  Then an earthquake, then a fire.  But the Lord remains distant.  Then, in the silence that follows, Elijah, sensing the imminence of the Lord, covers his face [to preserve his life] and steps to the entrance of the cave.  I imagine an anticipation so great as would replace the rhythm of his heartbeat with that of a hummingbird, the silence before a terrifying scene in a thriller, or the moment between the celebrant's question and the bride's 'I do', if she can stand to wait even a moment.  This silence is thin, one translation says, like the Celtic descriptions of holy places.  A thin place, a liminal place.  A threshold.

And there, the Lord breaks His silence.  He speaks, and asks his servant, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"



I feel so often that the Lord has placed a desire on my heart, has called me out into something, but as I have walked and waited on his further guidance I hear the question echoing through me, "What are you doing here, Drew?"

It's not a critical question, if I let it sit long enough.  At first if feels harsh, challenging, confrontational.  But it isn't, not really.  It's a question primarily born of relationship, and of waiting, and of a desire for me to be trued as a wheel.

At first glance, though, it can be frustrating, even disconcerting.  You called me here, didn't you Lord?  You put these desires in me, these longings, yearnings.  Or, so I thought.  What am I doing here?

But the question echoes still.  What are you doing here, Drew?  As this scripture simmered over the past few days, I have sensed a chuckle behind it, good-natured and inviting.  His question lends itself to the molding of my humility, to the purification of my desires, to the increase of my persistence or long-suffering.  It's a walking question, a relationship question, a question, again, that produces a holy tension not meant to be quickly resolved.

This question has moved me from frustration to worship, as I have realized that it does not negate my desires.  As he asked Elijah the second time, the Lord did not mean him to second-guess himself.  The Lord had told him to come, after all.  Instead the question encourages my faithful listening, the pruning and purifying of my desires.  The tension, there produced, is a crucible, burning away the fearful longings added by the flesh and the needy discolorations of the world.  When my desires finally settle on Him, rooted in love and joy, I see the question's tension as it was purposed: to be beautiful, directive, purifying.  Rare are these moments, in which I find my desires properly aligned, but so beautiful are they that they are cause for meditation and wonder.  They seem to come either in the presence of sheer beauty, or in the weightiness of deeply rooted tension. Or, more often, in amalgamations of the two.  Like when, on a beautiful Charleston night, a friend calls to share hard news.  Or as found this morning, sitting by Colonial Lake and praying though my jumbled yearnings.

What are you doing here, Drew?

Often in the Tanak (old testament), as the Spirit reveals dreams and visions to the prophets, an angel (or the Lord) will ask, 'What do you see?'  The prophet can only respond, 'Lord, you know.'  Perhaps these questions are intentionally rhetorical and repetitious.  Perhaps they seek less a resolution than a reliance, less an answer than awe.  These questions force us back to the Lord, to wait on Him, and worship.

My experience in these thin places is limited, but I sense that it is from these crucibles of desire and restraint, of tension, that the Lord speaks, and matures us.  As we find ourselves here, turning from frustration to prayer, waiting and worship, we are prepared for growth.  Perhaps, as we find ourselves here, in the liminal silence of pilgrimage and waiting, we are truly closer to God than when we think we have reached a resolution.  What are you doing here?  Lord, you know.

And off to work I go.