Advent, day 18. To Love and to Wait.

Elijah's life serving God is not what it would seem to us who read the highlights from chapter to chapter in the books of the Kings. The account reads more like a movie trailer with brilliant cinematographic displays of resurrection, fire from heaven, drought-induced famine, and heated confrontation with powerful royalty. But between those episodes of action and stress, Elijah lived a prophet's life on the edges of community, a marginal in most senses of the word.

As he approaches the winding down of his call to serve God, he possibly mused on the longterm outlook. He may well have been a big-picture, future-thinking man who saw himself as part of the Narrative. This enabled him to release any personal agenda he may have had and patiently await the outcome which he would not live to see. I surmise that it was a deep and lasting friendship with God which allowed him to follow a lonely path where often the signposts were obscure.

 Advent, day 18. To Love and to Wait.

Compelled by gentleness to serve,

by love to wait—

through years of drought, ravens of bread, 

jars of oil, threats of death.

To serve Heaven is to wait:

Such reckoning above and outside time.

Unseen, He works, I wait—

My service is to stand and wait.

Friendless I appear—

but within isolation

is a Friend closer than my heart,

more certain than a brother.

Not in my life alone, a plan that spans

across the reigns and toppling of kings—

valleys are filled,

mountains worn low,

crooked paths straightened.

That highway for our God

I will not see—

the end draws near,

but Friend, you chose a helper

—I will not go gently alone

but with the companion of Your design

not replaced,

but succeeded

according to Your time.

My soul waits for the Lord,

more than the watchman waits for the morning.