“What doest thou here, Elijah?” The quality of our life depends on the answer we give to such spiritual questioning day by day; for the Divine voices are never silent.
“What doest thou here?” The voice cries to us when we linger in the neighbourhood of any sin, or when we waste our opportunities in some form of idleness, or when we stand by
in cold or timid indifference, refusing help or consolation to any soul which seems to need it.
“What doest thou here?” It is possible that some of us hardly like to shape our answer in plain words lest we might have to say: “I am here lingering in my present way of life, not because I feel it to be the right way, but because it is the easy way, and I cannot bring myself to face the harder and more manly course of duty. I hear the voice; I cannot get away from it; it haunts me with its inquiries, when my heart is hot within me, as it is sometimes, while yet I am burying the light that is in my soul.” If it should be so with any of you, consider, I pray you, how by such hanging back you strengthen the force of evil in the world and weaken the good.
As the hour of reaction, weakness, flight, came to Elijah, so we must expect it to come to any of us; but the aim and purpose of our life should be that in such an hour we may be able to answer our Heavenly Father when He questions us, as Elijah was able to answer: “I
have been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts.” If we live as those who are jealous for God and His law, letting it be known and felt that we are thus jealous for His honour, not one of us could fail to make the life around us in some degree better, brighter, happier.
It is in this way that he who is strong and true makes truth and honour and uprightness stronger in those beside him; it is in this way that he who is industrious, as a duty, makes industry more prevalent; it is in this way that he who shows his hatred of impurity makes the atmosphere pure in his society.
And in so far as any of you are acting in this way you are doing a prophet’s work, and you, too, may claim to have been jealous for the Lord God of Hosts. So the youngest boy and the oldest man may become fellow-labourers—Θεου yαρ εσμεν συνερyοι—fellow-labourers in the harvest-field of God, and it is a great privilege to claim.
But the blessing of it is greater still. Very often, if you are known to be thus jealous, even
your presence will banish sin, silencing the evil tongue, strengthening the weaker brother, and making the sunshine of a new life to shine all round you.