The Cure for Despondency

Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. All at once an angel touched him and said, Get up and eat. He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you. So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days …

1 Kings 19:5-8a

Notice the wonderful cure that God sets forth for us. Here we discover that God, in His grace, moving to meet our need, always meets the whole man. The first step in God's program of resuscitation for this prophet is to feed him and put him to bed. He meets the physical first. I love that. How intensely practical God is! For half of Elijah's problem here is simply that he was suffering from sheer physical weariness. He needed a good night's sleep and a good full meal. I am convinced that much of the time, when we suffer from despondency and dejection, the first step in the cure will be this very thing — that we simply get a good night's sleep. This is a perfectly religious activity, there's nothing wrong with it at all. If it bothers you to get a good night's sleep, I suggest you read this passage again and again, for God put the prophet to bed. That is the way it started.

The second step is emotional. God evidently sent the prophet to Mount Horeb, which is another name for Mount Sinai, where the law was given. Why does he go there? Because Sinai is the place of holy memories. Sinai stood forever as the reminder to Israel of God's power and God's grace. As Elijah went back to the place where Moses stood before the rock and the great rock gushed forth water, as a picture of the rivers of living water that Christ our Rock pours out into the life of those who come to Him; as he stood at the foot of the mountain that shook and trembled under the might and power of God and from which the law thundered forth, he could not help but be reminded — emotionally, now — of the tremendous adequacy of God — of all that He could do. It is a wise person who flees to some Horeb when life turns black on his hands. He went back to the place, which, even in its very associations, reminded him — every stone, every rock, every crag, every cave of the mountainside spoke in eloquent terms of a God who cared and a God who could do anything.

Lord, you are the great shepherd who restores both my body and my soul.