A Quietly Devastating Question

A reflection on 1 Kings 19: 9-18

WHAT are you doing here?

What are you DOING here?

What are YOU doing here?

What are you doing HERE?

As my 8^th grade English teacher, Mrs. Hufty would say, “It makes a difference which emPHAsis you put on the syllABle.”

That’s why I love the question asked of Elijah there on Mount Horeb in 1 Kings 19.¹

After all the spectacle—the showdown on Mount Carmel, fire from heaven, the defeat of the prophets of Baal, the death threats from Jezebel, and Elijah’s complete emotional breakdown—we’re told something curious.

The word of the Lord came to him… And it wasn’t in the form of a command, a fancy miracle, or a drawn-out explanation. But a quietly simple, yet oh so devastating question:

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

The word of the Lord came in the form of a question that would have made Alex Trebek smile.

I happen to believe questions are one of God’s favorite languages. The right question at the right time can rearrange your entire trajectory like nothing else.

Photo by Ana Municio on Unsplash

Questions can be annoying because right when you need immediate relief, questions don’t offer it. Questions don’t solve mysteries, they create them. Questions are a disturbance meant to create space for something new to emerge.

And God asks Elijah twice! Often when a name is mentioned twice, it’s a question of identity. And the reader can ready themselves for that character’s transition into a new season of recognized becoming.

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

With this question, it appears the concentration is not on the action but on the identity of the man.

“What are YOU doing here, Elijah?”

As though God is gently inviting Elijah to remember who. he. is.

Every time someone addressed Elijah by name, they were preaching a little sermon that went like this, “My God is YHWH.”

Imagine hearing that same tiny sermon your entire life. And then imagine becoming so thoroughly exhausted, so afraid, and disillusioned that you can no longer believe the truth your own name has always been proclaiming. That’s Elijah.

And God doesn’t respond by correcting his theological thinking. Instead, the response is that quietly devastating question.

Elijah’s response to it sounds pretty dramatic and maybe even a little self-righteous.

But mostly, he just sounds like someone who has forgotten his own name, and Lord have mercy, can’t we all relate to that?

The Scriptures never tell us how old Elijah was during this encounter. But we do know he had just experienced the greatest public triumph of his life. Almost immediately afterward came a death threat, then overwhelming exhaustion, despair, and the collapse of everything that had once seemed so certain.

Sounds a helluva lot like mid-life to me! From where I’m standing, it appears like an old version of Elijah is dying to make space for the new.

We’re told by Carl Jung that that’s just how it all works.

The first half of life is spent building an identity. We establish careers, families, beliefs, reputations, and dreams. We learn how to survive and succeed.

Then, often somewhere between thirty-five and fifty-five—though certainly not only then—life begins asking different questions.

Who are you… now?

Who were you before everyone told you who you should become?

What parts of yourself have been faithful… and what parts have merely been performing?

Can you trust the person who is emerging?

God’s questions aren’t searching for information. They’re searching for us!

Whispered Invitations

These type of rebirth recognitions almost always require some kind of emotional devastation or at least a severe disruption to life. Something severe enough to loosen our grip. Sometimes a career disappointment or a long-held existential certainty hits its limits. Often it’s some form of BIG grief. Sometimes it’s the identity we’ve spent decades carefully shaping and maintaining.

Some preachers in the manosphere imagine this destruction as God bullying us into submission. But we know that’s not it.

Elijah traveled to the mountain of Horeb. Horeb in Hebrew? Means destruction! Maybe Horeb was Elijah’s symbol for the BIG midlife transition.

The author makes it really clear that God and destruction are not the same thing.

There was a violent wind.

“The Lord was not in the wind.”

There was an earthquake.

“The Lord was not in the earthquake.”

There was a fire.

“The Lord was not in the fire.”

It’s almost as though the writer anticipates our tendency to blame God for every catastrophe and gently says, “Nope. She’s not about that.”

Not in the destruction. Not in the calamity. Not in the collapse.

But the nurturing afterward.

After the wind.

After the earthquake.

After the fire.

There came what many English translations call “a still small voice” or “a gentle whisper.” The sound of sheer silence.

And from within that quiet came the same question.

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

No, God didn’t need the information… But Elijah needed the question.

I still need that question. There’s been seasons where the old version of me could no longer cut it for the season I was about to enter.

In a few of those seasons, to be perfectly honest, death truly felt preferable. Times when God’s voice couldn’t be heard amidst all the noise, but only in the post-calamity silence that followed.

I tend to believe this is how God’s voice lands with us. Not through bright spectacle and seldom through the best of sermons. And not through coercions or catastrophes. But through the quiet questions that cut to the heart of who you are. And then those slow roasted rememberings. The whisperings at the beginning of a new birth.

The story here in 1 Kings is a gentle reminder that beneath all the former certainties, disappointments, and deconstructing, the successes, failures, and collapse… our deepest name has never changed.

The God who called Elijah by name is still calling us by ours.

Never shouting, shaming, or interrogating. But a quiet invitation to awaken us to who we are.

That’s what the creative whisper has always been doing. Calling us back to the name we’ve most likely forgotten. Inviting YOU to become who you’ve been all along.

1. Full Text of 1 Kings 19: 9-18 (NIV)

⁹ There he went into a cave and spent the night.

And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

¹⁰ He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

¹¹ The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. ¹² After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

¹⁴ He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

¹⁵ The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. ¹⁶ Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. ¹⁷ Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. ¹⁸ Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”