Location, Location, Location - Elijah

Why are you here? 

Horatio Spafford's biography is one of multiple tragedies, heartache upon heartache.  A prominent lawyer and real estate investor in Chicago in the early 1800s Spafford lost it all in the great Chicago fire.  Among the losses, the son born to him and his wife Anna.  

He and his wife began rebuilding their lives and their wealth and family bloomed.  But the pressures of the rebuilding drove him to the edge.  The family needed a vacation to get away from it all and planned a trip to Europe aboard the SS Ville du Havre. At the last minute, Horatio was detained by business, so his wife and four daughters went without him anticipating he would join them as soon as he could.  

But the Ville de Havre was struck by another vessel on its voyage killing 226 people on board including all four of their daughters - Annie, Maggie, Bessie and Tanetta. When the remaining passengers finally reached Wales, Anna sent Horatio a simple two-word telegram, "Saved Alone".  On his voyage to meet his grieving wife at the point where his daughters had perished and the cobalt waves of the Atlantic belied its watery graves, he penned the words to the hymn "It Is Well with My Soul".   

If that's all you know of the Spaffords, you would be surprised to know that poem is displayed in the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. Following their life of losses, Horatio and Anna left the life of prosperity and its wanton pressures to pursue a life they loved. They and several friends built a meaningful life of philanthropy together in Israel including humanitarian relief to Muslims, Jews, and Christians after World War I.  

You may wonder why I would retell this well-known story when the crux of the title is centered on the prophet Elijah. I think we often use the phrase "well with my soul" to imply that we're ok. Life shoves you around or breaks your heart and our resolute response is that "it is well with my soul. I'm alright.  My relationship with God is intact. It'll be ok."  A hymned version of "it's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine" if you will. 

I wonder, kind reader, if the rest of his story has a unique parallel with that of Elijah.   

In the account of 1Kings 19 after the watershed experience on Mt Carmel against the prophets of Baal, Elijah fled. The pressures of Jezebel's threats and Ahab's targets were too much. He slept under a broom tree where an angel came, fed him and told him to sleep. The journey had been too much for him. Elijah eventually went all the way to Mt. Horeb. 

It was there that the voice of the Lord asked him, "What are you doing here?"  Could the underlying inquiry be "Is it well with your soul?"  He had gone a long way, on a little nourishment, against intense pressure and it had driven Elijah a 40-day journey away.  

What WAS he doing there?  Really?

Elijah was living in the fallout of neglected soul care - too much pressure, too high an expectation of himself, too little focus on what really mattered.  Like Elijah, we find neglected soul care will take us everywhere we never wanted to go.  We long for nurturing and peace and comfort, and when we neglect the proper way to receive them - through quiet, solitude, being present, honoring the Sabbath - our souls find nurturing, peace and comfort in illicit ways.  It might look like addiction, or illness, or chaos in our mind or surroundings.  

What are you doing there? 

What I love about the Spafford's story is not the relatable and timeless hymn that we call upon in our seasons of grief and suffering.  It's that following so much tragedy, they turned away from the chaotic life and fed their souls in a life they loved.  A life that was selfless even as much as it was soul-tending.  

Is it well with your soul?  How do you tend to your inner needs?  How do you find nurturing, peace and comfort in the midst of your daily stress?  Look at the landscape of your soul and ask yourself, "What are you doing here?" What are you doing living in a house in disarray, with health declining, thoughts looping, and just.so.tired.  

Take care of yourself.  Tend to your soul.  It speaks far more powerfully than all the poems written in anguish, more loudly than the spectacle of confrontation.  

Is it well with your soul? 

Location, Location, Location - Cain

Where is your brother? 

In the plethora of biblical stories that mirror our current culture, surely one seems more relevant than other.  If so, I'd like to nominate the story of Cain & Abel.  The story of two brothers in the same family, each unique and each in relationship with the Creator.  Both have a heart to please Him, and each chose different means for doing so.  

Abel offered a sacrifice of the firstborn of his flock. Cain brought a sacrifice of his harvest here and there.  God accepted Abel's offering. Cain's He did not, and Cain didn't take that very well.   

Some well-respected Bible scholars will tell you Abel's was accepted because it was a blood sacrifice where Cain's wasn't.  I believe the truer principle here is with regard to a first fruits offering. Abel gave God the firstborn, his first fruits offering, and Cain gave "in the course of time" - a little here and there.  

We all know how the story goes - Cain kills Abel.  Even after a stern and understanding warning from the Creator to master sin rather than be overtaken by it, Cain just couldn't separate his own responsibility to God from his need to be right or better than his brother.  

Sound familiar?  Disagreeing people acting disagreeable, angry, ugly, unholy, full of self-promoting violence?  It's our world.  We live in an age when it is not only fully acceptable to sacrifice people over our opinions, it’s expected.  Cutting people out of your life is applauded. But scripture is still true, hating someone is the same as murder.  Hating someone is the same as Cain and Abel - sin, my friend, is still "crouching at the door." (Genesis 4:7)  

As followers of Christ, we don't get the luxury of ostracizing anyone we do not walk in lockstep with.  And here's why... they are a soul that God deeply loves and wants to enjoy fellowship with. They are a life, and every life has in its core eternity. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)  Their soul weighs in the balance, and so does yours.

If I had a dime for every person I know with a family estrangement or heartbreak, I could retire.  I have my own that, for the life of me, I don't know how to repair except through prayer.  So when God comes to me and asks, "where is your brother?" as He did with Cain, I know my responsibility is before God to love and not hate, to be open to reconciliation not continue estrangement, to value life and pray for their soul.  

Where is your brother? Is there an amends that needs to be made or a prayer that needs to be said?  Romans 12:18 encourages us this way, 

"If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all."

And when it's not possible, we value life.  We pray.   

PS - If we are estranged, I'm sorry it came to this, but the door is always open, dialogue is always welcome.  You're loved and missed. 

Location, Location, Location - Adam

 Where are you?

The world was new, and the idyllic atmosphere can only be imagined as utopian.  There was life - every imaginable plant in its budding and blooming form, fragrant and beautiful, every creature in its wild diversity and docile demeanor.  But even more than the beauty we can only imagine and placidity we can only dream of, there was connection.  Man and woman in perfect regular fellowship with their Creator.  Creation enjoyed Creator, and Creator delighted in His Creation.  

Every evening after the day's tasks, they walked together, shared with one another on a deep level, maybe even laughed.  I imagine it to be like those hushed tones that used to come from the kitchen as mom and dad began the day while the rest of use slept a little longer - peaceful, purposeful, wedded, one.  

Perfection. 

Then imperfection - namely sin, namely Creation finding its satisfaction in self-promoting, self-directed actions that led away from the Creator. 

It was bad; bad enough that they hid in the shadows of the created haven from the Creator of the haven... as if He didn't know every inch of the Garden intimately. 

The sun began to set, the usual calm and settling of the day began.  Time to unwind with the King of the universe. But everything had changed. Forever. 

God entered for the evening stroll, but they weren't waiting for Him this time.  And in a reverberating tone echoing from empty spaces, God asked, "Where are you?" 

As if He didn't know. 

God knew where they were, but the hiding pair seemed suddenly aware of themselves, unaware of Him, and making every effort to avoid the One Who came to them. What is it about us that makes us hide from God at the moments we need Him most?  It's not always sin and shame that chases us from shadow to shadow.  It's often just an unwillingness to be present with Him, to allow Him to enter into our broken world.  Do we blame Him for our messes or just reluctance to process before Him the details that bring us low? 

As we enter the New Year, we ought to listen for the same voice in the same hushed environment in the same all-knowing, ever-seeking tone.  Dear reader, where are you?  

Where are you in relation to the God Who loves you and continually seeks you out?  Where are you in your regular appointment-keeping with the King of the Universe?  

Time to stop hiding perhaps by first identifying what deed done by you or to you made you vacate God's active fellowship?  What situation is coming between you?  

God, your Father, still comes to you looking for relationship (not perfection.)  Where are you?