AP

2 Kings 1:5-9a The messengers returned to the king, and he said to them, “Why have you returned?”  And they said to him, “There came a man to meet us, and said to us, ‘Go back to the king who sent you, and say to him, Thus says the LORD, Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?  Therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.’”  He said to them, “What kind of man was he who came to meet you and told you these things?”  They answered him, “He wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.”  And he said, “It is Elijah the Tishbite.”  Then the king sent to him a captain of fifty men with his fifty.

My stand-out observance for today is the way the Prophet Elijah’s unsophisticated poor-man’s garment of ‘hair and a belt of leather’, and his commitment to speaking God’s truth regardless, was sufficient for King Ahaziah to identify him correctly without hesitation.  The parents of Ahaziah, Ahab and Jezebel, had certainly been confronted and severely challenged by this humble, ‘eccentric’ prophet who had become widely known as the ‘man of God’!

I thought immediately of Jesus’ comment in his Sermon on the Mount’: “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?  It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.  You are the light of the world.  A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.  Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)

Elijah made a big impact on his surrounding culture because he was different from it and distinctive in it.  I wonder if we are trying so hard today to be like, and acceptable to, the people around us, in terms of our speech, fashions and behaviour, so as not to cause offence, that we cease to be effective as ‘salt’ and ‘light’ in the way Jesus calls us to be.  I find it quite a challenge.

– Bruce Christian