It is easy – and understandable – to feel overwhelmed when confronted with evil on a huge scale. We tend to think, “What difference can I make? I can’t change the tide of what’s happening. This is too big for me. Maybe if I was ((name your favorite Christian leader, past or present)), then I could do something about this. But I’m not. I’m just me.”
Now consider Elijah, the prophet of God. He faced down King Ahab, stopped the rain for three and a half years, took on 950 prophets of Baal and Asherah, raised a boy from the dead, and called Israel back to Yahweh, the one true God. And yet James 5:17-18 states clearly and simply:
“Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.”
Did you hear that? “Elijah was a man just like us.” He may have been a hero, but he was – at the core – just a regular man, with all that that entailed:
· He struggled with sin.
· He fought against depression.
· He battled with fear.
He wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t omniscient, he wasn’t always fearless. He was a man – just like us.
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