The doctor said, “Umm, I have even worse news for you.” The patient said, “Worse news, what could be worse news than telling me I’m going to die in 24 hours.” The doctor replied, “Well, I tried calling you yesterday to tell you the bad news.”

Have you ever had a bad day. Maybe not quite as bad as this poor fellow, but I’m sure that you have had bad days before. Everyone experiences bad days from time to time. Our hope is that our good days will outweigh the bad.

Our lives are filled with mountaintops and valleys. The mountaintops represent those times in our lives when everything is going our way. Life couldn’t be better. We’re on top of the world, happy as a clam, singing like a bird.

The valleys feel radically different, though. They represent the times when life could be better. Perhaps, we failed in our work performance, or received a grim diagnosis from the doctor. Maybe a loved one died, or a long-term friendship ended. These times in our lives feel like we’re in an eternal tunnel with NO light at its end.

The passage read for us earlier tells part of the story of Elijah, a mighty prophet of God. It is safe to say, upon reading our passage from 1 Kings 19 that Elijah is in a deep, deep valley. I don’t mean that he physically is in a valley somewhere in the land of Judah. No, I mean that physically, mentally, and spiritually, Elijah is in a valley of deep depression.

You see, I know this because Elijah wanted to give up. Let’s follow a little bit of the back story to learn why Elijah wanted to give up.

• At the end of chap. 16 we read that Ahab is King of Israel.
  
• 1 Kings 16:31b - Ahab married “Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him.”
  
• 1 Kings 16:32 - Ahab “set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria. 33 Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than did all the kings of Israel before him.”
• In chapter 18, Elijah is told by God to confront King Ahab because of his sinfulness of worshiping Baal. He does so by having a showdown with the prophets of Baal. Two bulls are placed on identical altars and the first god to rain fire down from heaven to burn the sacrifice was the one true God. Baal’s prophets shouted to their god from morning until evening, yet their was no fire. Elijah took his bull, laid it on the altar and then three times had them pour four large jars of water all over the sacrifice. When the time for the sacrifice came, he prayed a simple prayer, and fire fell from heaven and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the altar, and the scripture tells us even “licked up the water in the trench.”
  
• So basically, King Ahab and his Baal prophets were humiliated in front of the people of Israel. This didn’t make Ahab and Jezebel very happy.
  
• In the beginning of Chapter 19, we’re told that King Ahab shared what had happened with his wife, Jezebel and that she sent a messenger to Elijah with the promise that she would hunt him down and kill him. (Revised Keith version) NIV - "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them."
• then we read in 19:3, “Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.”

Elijah wanted to give up. I’m always amazed at how Old Testament characters can do something so totally amazing to prove God’s supremacy and even his favor, and then turn so dramatically 180 degrees. I mean, here Elijah did this incredible miracle through the power of God and it seems in the next breath, he runs away from the threats of a woman. (There are so many ways that I could go with this line of thinking, but friends I’m so much wiser than that.) Did he not think that the God of heaven who could send fire to burn a soaking wet sacrifice, could just as easily take care of the threats of a wicked, pagan woman?

For whatever reason, Elijah gives up. He runs away. The scripture tells us that “He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die.” He prayed, “I’ve had enough, Lord. Take my life. I am no better than my ancestors. Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.”

It would appear that Elijah is having a bad day, or rather a string of bad days put together. So much so that he wants to give up and die. Aren’t we so glad that God doesn’t always give us what we ask for?

You see, God didn’t give up on Elijah. God still had a plan for Elijah. He wasn’t through with him, yet. But God first had to get Elijah out of this incredible valley of depression that he was in. How did God choose to do that? Did he open the heavens and let Elijah see some incredible vision that would inspire him to go on? Did God whisper a heavenly truth in Elijah’s ear so that his spirit would be encouraged and he would see that there was hope for him yet?

No. God’s prescription was simple, but effective. 1 Kings 19: 5ff - “All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat." 6 He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. 7 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." 8 So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.”

Mt. Carmel was the location of the humiliating sacrificial showdown between Elijah and Baal’s prophets. When Elijah ran, the text tells us that he went to Beersheba, which a careful study of several Bible maps informed me was over 100 miles away.

Elijah was distraught. He had been on the run for days. Who knows how much food and water he had to sustain his body. So God’s answer to Elijah’s death prayer was to sustain his body. To nourish him back to physical and spiritual health.

God provided Elijah with a meal. And then God provided a second meal as the angel of the Lord said, “for the journey is too much for you.”

When we are in those deep valley’s, we want God to bring us a vision, or share with us a life-changing truth. Sometimes we find ourselves in a deep, deep valley like Elijah, and while we may want God to do some grand miracle that will restore our faith in him, maybe God’s plan is to do something simple, basic, ordinary.

You see, the danger in waiting for the grandiose miracles of God, is we might fail to see the simple things God is doing for us. It is the simple things which can build up our faith in God. The Israelite people were so hoping that God would send a warrior Messiah to eradicate the Roman Government. They overlooked that humble, quiet, gentle man, Jesus who came as Messiah, God’s Son.

Maybe Elijah was waiting for God to do something grandiose, but God didn’t. He did something simple.. God provided Elijah with a meal. I find it interesting to note that after being sustained by food and water, Elijah didn’t pray to die anymore, but to the mountain of God. There he received God’s word that would lead him into his future.

There’s a humorous saying, “Be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it.” There is some truth in that saying. But in the end, God really knows what we need, and he provides for us what is most needed. Often times, all we need is the simplest reminder that we are a child of God. That God loves us.

Dr. Karl Menninger, the famous psychiastrist, once gave a lecture on mental health and was answering questions from the audience. One person stood up and said, “Dr. Menninger, what advice would you give to a person who feels a nervous breakdown coming on?”

Of course, most in the audience expected him to reply, “I’d tell that person to get to a psychiatrist, immediately.” To their surprise, he said: “I’d tell that person to lock up their house, go to worst section of town, find someone in need and do something to help that person.”

The point of the story is that when we are in that deep, deep valley, it is so easy to become consumed with our own woes. Dr. Menninger’s advice tells us that we can pull ourselves out of that deep, deep valley, not by looking inward, but by looking outward. By focusing on the needs of someone else, we replace our own capacity for self-pity with a fresh understanding of the needs of someone else. And the good feelings we receive from helping someone in need, helps us to begin climbing up to the next mountaintop.