Today’s Scripture Reading (May 28,
2013): 1 Kings 18
The 1936
novel “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell is a historical novel set in
American Civil War Georgia. The original title of the book was actually
“Tomorrow is Another Day.” But the title was changed to “Gone with the Wind.”
The novel’s title is actually spoken by Scarlett O’Hara as she muses as to
whether or not she will ever see home again. She wonders about the plantation,
Tara, that she had left at the beginning of the war. She wonders if Tara still
stands or whether it is “gone with the wind that has swept through Georgia.” In
a very real sense, the whole novel is really about the departure of the kind of
life that existed in the South prior to the Civil War - the lifestyle of a
people that disappeared mysteriously with the wind.
The wind has
always been a mysterious phenomenon. No one quite knows where it comes from or
where it goes. All we know of its existence is that we are able to watch its
effects. Whether it is a gentle breeze or a hurricane force storm, wind changes
everything in its path. No one has seen the wind, and yet we have all felt it –
for good or for ill.
Elijah and
Obadiah meet. They are not strangers. Obadiah has been a student of Elijah, he
has known him and watched him, and probably in some ways has patterned his own
ministry after that of his mentor. And it is good for Obadiah to see Elijah
once again, but it is also a bit of a mystery. After all, King Ahab has had
people out searching for Elijah ever since Elijah first disappeared. It was as
if the wind had picked him up and carried him off, and now it had carried him
back. So when Elijah tells Obadiah to go and get Ahab, Obadiah is not really
sure that he should follow through. After all, what if the wind carries Elijah
off once again? Everything about Elijah in these recent years has been a grand
mystery, and there is no reason to believe that the mystery has ended. So his
question for his mentor is that he wonders where the Spirit of God would take
him next. The word that Obadiah uses for Spirit is “ruwach” and it could be
literally translated as “the wind of God.”
But for
Elijah, he knew that the wind of God was about to blow through Judah and it was
going to change the landscape, but not by carrying him away and hiding him once
again. That part of the story was past. No was the time for a confrontation
between God and Ba’al – or maybe better worded as God and Ahab and Jezebel.
Elijah recognized that in the act that was to follow, Elijah would be a minor character.
Obadiah had nothing to fear. The wind was now in control, and everything that
was about to follow was going to happen only because of the presence of the
Spirit – or the wind – of God.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Kings
19
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