How did God cure this man who was in the blues? First, He used a very commonplace remedy. He put him to sleep. He let him rest. Rest is a very religious thing for a tired man. Now, a man who has overworked himself needs to rest from his work. A lot of blue people need rest from idleness. One big reason they are blue is because they have nothing else to do. God gave this man a rest. That was the first step.
In the second place, He showed him his sin. He showed him where he was wrong and brought him to repentance and thus restored the old relationship of the past. He asked him this question: "What doest thou here, Elijah?" The emphasis is on the "doest." Elijah must have blushed at that question. And he said, "Oh, I am whining. I am complaining. I am trying to keep books, to add up a few columns of figures and test by that as to whether I am a success or a failure."
Now, what the Lord wanted Elijah to learn is just what He wants you and me to learn, that our job in this world is not bookkeeping. It is not for us to try to sum up the amount of good we have done. It is not for us to test whether we have succeeded or whether we have failed. The truth of the matter is that we are not always competent to tell the difference between success and failure. There are some seeming successes that in reality are failures and there are some of the supreme failures that have turned out to be the most glorious successes.
The greatest failure in the eyes of men that was ever made, was the failure on Calvary, and yet it came to pass that the world's darkest night was in reality the mother of its brightest day; that its grimmest desert became its sweetest flower garden. Do not break your heart and tear your hair keeping books.
One of the sanest things I ever heard was spoken by an able preacher who came one day to preach in my town. There was almost nobody out to hear him. And he preached a wonderful sermon and closed with this most sensible word: "I don't know what I have accomplished by coming to this town. I only know that I have come with God in my heart and have done my best. I am not keeping books. God is doing that. Some day on the other side of the River I am going to take down my book and look at it,—God will let me,—and I am going to see just what I accomplished when I came to your town." That is sensible and that is religious.
And so the Lord was saying to Elijah: "It is not your business to keep books. You do not know how to keep them, in the first place. You added up a column of figures and got zero. I added it up and got 7,000. Yes, there are 7,000 that have not bowed the knee to Baal. You have been a help. You have been an inspiration. You have not been a failure, because you have walked with me." God doesn't fail and the man who walks with him will not fail. He may not accomplish his ambition. He may not realize many of the great hopes of his life, but if he lives in the secret place of the Most High his life will never be a failure.
I read not long ago of a young woman who consecrated her life to God for mission work in India. She was ready for the great enterprise, but just before she was to set sail for that far country, her mother was taken sick with a lingering disease. She had to stay and nurse her for some three years. Then the Angel of Release came and the mother went home.
Preparations were made a second time for her setting out to India. But from a little home in the distant west there came a call for help. A widowed sister of this would-be missionary was sick and there were three little children to be cared for. She went to her sister's bedside. In a short time the sister died and the three little orphans were left on her hands, and the one big hope of her life had to be given up. It seemed strange. It seemed hard. Yet she remained true to the task that lay nearest. At last all three children were able to look after themselves. But by that time she herself was too old to go to her loved mission field.
Then one day one of those orphans for whom she had given up her life's dream put her arms around her neck and told her that she was going to be a missionary and that the field that she had chosen was India. And in later days the other two told the same story. So they all three went away to India to which she had so longed to go. And as they passed out to the land of her love and her prayers this heroic soul knew that she had not failed. And so God's call to Elijah, to you and to me is to leave off our heart-breaking bookkeeping, to put our hands in His and to resume the journey. And as we go we shall in some way shake off our discouragement as a hampering garment and we shall find ourselves in the sunlight once more. And we shall come to know for ourselves that "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee."