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My Inertia


I couldn't move, my legs and arms felt like loaded sandbags. My mind and eyes were heavy, I would sit or stretch out on my bed and find sleep invading my daytime hours. I had no energy to fight it off, so I succumbed and became inert. Why are there days when I can have so much strength and then these days of sluggishness that completely wipe out any short-lived gains? Wrapped within my physical exhaustion is a restless mind, not content to settle, but looking for control and peace. Spiritually I am spent, I long for a miracle before my eyes . . .

I am reading this familiar story, and I know where it will eventually go. Elijah was a prophet who alone seemed to hear the occasional voice of God. First to announce a severe famine, then to challenge 850 prophets and a King who didn't believe in Yahweh. It was an impressive showdown on the mountain top when God answered his humble prayer by bringing fire down from heaven to burn up and consume the offering that he had made. Why doesn't God appear in my life like that? Sometimes, even just once, I long for a visible, audible intervention from God Himself. I wish my parents were back here in life so I could ask them how to make sense of my faith and life with an unseen God. I think my times of total inertia find me searching and looking for an answer that will ignite me. . .

Such was my mind, my heart, and my body as I journeyed up my path on my morning bike ride. On those quiet roads, I find myself pouring out my heart before the only Savior that I know. As I pedal, despite my fatigue, I seem to have more strength today, in fact the ride seems to go much easier though my sweat begins to pour. I'm at the peak and surrounded by wild flowers and heavy green brush. The mountains are silent before me. I realize that the next few pages of the Elijah story will wind up with Elijah recognizing that God is not in just the dramatic, but in his very ordinary life, by giving him food, nourishment, rest, protection, and support. That is to be my faith walk too, that God is here in my days, ever before me. Just like He provides for the magnificent mountains before me that survive the wild winds, the vicious fires, the abuse of man and beast, they still stand and produce this bounty of green and flowers before me. God is here right now in my inertia, in my fears, in my pain, and able to free me from its grip . . .

" . . . And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks 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. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing . . . What are you doing here, Elijah?" (I Kings 19:11-13)

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