Back in 2009, after a bad loss in Maine for same sex marriage which folks expected to win, I wrote about what I call “The Elijah Moment.” As I reprint below, the “Elijah Moment” is a reference to the story of Elijah where, after he performs the miracle on Mt Carmel and destroys the priests of Ba’al and Ashtoret, Jezebel issues a royal decree that totally undoes everything he did and, as the cherry on top, puts a bounty on Elijah’s head. As I describe below, Elijah does not take this well.
For everyone who cares deeply about a cause and fights for it as hard as they can, there generally comes an Elijah moment. That moment when you did all you could, fought as hard and as smart as you could — and still lost. Because that happens. Sometimes you can play your best game and still lose.
And it is soul crushing.
Not surprisingly, about 49% of the country are feeling that way (while 51% are rejoicing). So I reprint the relevant part here. There is no simple answer. The Elijah Moment is an awful thing to experience. I’ve felt it more than once. But you can survive. You can come back. Or, as Elijah did, you can give in to the despair. But even in Elijah’s case, he designated a next generation (Elisha) to replace him. The fight goes on.
As related in Kings I 18:1-19:14, Elijah performed the miracle on Mt. Carmel, showing the priests of Ba’al as worshipers of a false god impotent before the Lord. The people of Israel — even the wicked King Ahab — responded with a fervent embrace of God and Elijah ran miraculously before Ahab’s chariot. But when Ahab told his queen, Jezebel, she brushed the miracle aside, flipped Ahab back to idolatry, and sent word to Elijah that nothing he did mattered and she would send soldiers forth to kill him.
With a word, Jezebel had utterly undone what Elijah had done.
Elijah is crushed. He lapses into a state of utter and unresponsive depression. He goes to the desert to lie down and die. An angel appears before him and gives him food and tells him to eat. In classic depression mode, Elijah takes the food, eats without protest, and lies back down again to die. God then sends him on a journey through the desert and when Elijah arrives at a cave God speaks to him: “Why hast thou come Elijah?” Elijah responds: “I have done exceedingly zealously for the Lord of Hosts, for the children of Israel have abandoned your covenant, destroyed your altars, and murdered your prophets until only I am left, and now they seek my life as well.”
Then the Lord said: “Go forth from the cave and the Lord shall pass before you.” And a great wind arose, with a force so mighty that it shattered stone, but the Lord was not in the wind. And when the wind passed there was a great earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. Then there passed a mighty fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, a still small voice.
And when Elijah heard, he turned from the mouth of the cave and covered his head with his mantle. And the Lord asked “Why have you come Elijah?” And Elijah repeated the same answer, word for word, “I have done exceedingly zealously for the Lord of Hosts, for the children of Israel have abandoned your covenant, destroyed your altars, and murdered your prophets until only I am left, and now they seek my life as well.”
This is Elijah’s terrible moment. He has invested himself completely and utterly in his cause — a cause that is righteous and just. He has done everything he possibly can. He has literally performed miracles and shown his enemies to be utterly wrong by the very tests to which they agreed to be judged.
And none of that mattered.
For every person who invests himself or herself in a cause, there may come such an “Elijah moment.” The bitter moment of discovering that even when you do everything right, even when the cause is so important and central to everything you believe and to your conception of the universe and how it should work that “failure is not an option.” When you look at everything you did and know that not only is there nothing else you could have done differently, but that you exceeded what it was ever reasonable to believe you could accomplish.
And in the end, it didn’t matter.
For Elijah, it was soul crushing. God shows Elijah the parable of the still small voice, the reminder that in the end it is not force or might or miracles which can bring people to do what is right. Miracles or force that shock and awe, or in our modern society court cases and social pressure, may temporarily change someone’s outward behavior. But it is only when a person hears the still small voice calling them to their better nature can a person genuinely change within and accept a new truth. But Elijah cannot bear it. It is not that he does not recognize the still small voice of the Lord. He hears it. But he can no longer bear the terrible burden of not merely living among a people who close their ears to the still small voice — but who refuse to listen. And so Elijah turns away. He literally covers his head to hide himself from the voice of the Lord and repeats again to God “I have done exceedingly zealously, I have given my all, and all my efforts have been in vain. I cannot bear to go on.”
I suspect for many who have given of themselves and invested themselves in this election, this is an Elijah moment. From personal experience, I can say that it is a bitter thing. But I can also say that — after a time — it is possible to do what Elijah could not. It is possible to hear the still small voice again and bear the burden it places upon you, to come back out from under your cloak, dust yourself off, and go back to fight another day.
And for those of us for whom this was not quite so devastating a loss, for those of sufficiently removed that we can immediately look ahead to the next fight — perhaps even more passionately fueled by anger — give those who feel despair their chance to heal. It is as necessary to grieve and recover from such a devastating blow as it would be from the loss of a loved one.
Stay tuned . . .
