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OK, so. Lately I've been looking at maybe quite a bit of YouTube videos of people on cruises . OK, so there's Virgin cruise there's lots of cruises. There's Virgin Cruises, Disney cruises. My

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favorite is cruising with Ben and David, like these northern Englishmen who have a very thick accent, which , OK, anyways, um, and, and the reason why I've been looking at. Wasting my

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time looking at people on cruises instead of doing something more useful like braiding things, I guess, is because like many of you, if not most of you, especially after Easter, I'm kind of tired

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. OK. And it's not just Easter though, of course, right? It's not a seasonal thing , um, nor the fact that it's the end of the semester that. Yes, that's not helping

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, OK? But it's it's a general thing. I am tired because this year, especially these last couple of months, OK, they've been a lot , OK. And indeed signs of exhaustion and frustration

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are everywhere to give you one example, a title , uh, uh, a, a journal, an article from The Atlantic from the time of the first Trump presidency, why the past 10 years of

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. American life have been uniquely stupid subtitle. It's not just the phase. OK, now in month 4 of the second Trump presidency, indeed it is not just a phase, OK. Um, it

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should come as no surprise that the sense of being overwhelmed, this is not new, it's also very biblical. Plenty of characters in the biblical texts feel , uh, very overwhelmed, despondent, ready to

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throw in the towel. And those who are most tired are usually the prophets such as Jeremiah who is so sick of all of it that there's a whole section of the Hebrew Bible called the lamentations of Jeremiah

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, which as you can imagine is full of lamentations . OK, so. And and and we can see why profits would be so easily discouraged, right ? The line of work which in the modern day

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would constitute a combination of something like social worker, teacher, pastor, psychologist, protester well these are jobs that are pretty prone to burnout. Interestingly, these are jobs that some of you guys, like

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a lot of you guys want, so OK, good luck. OK, OK, um, and one such burned out exhaustive prophet is Elijah and Elijah is one of the most important and one of the

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most famous of Israelite prophets. He's compared to Moses , um, in the post biblical traditions he is viewed as the precursor to the Messiah. And in 1 Kings 19 we are told that Elijah, Mr

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. Messianic precursor, or second Moses, he's so demoralized, so burned out that he flees to a wilderness to sit under a broom tree, OK? And there he tells God that he is, he's

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done, right? I have had enough. Take away my life, he cries, OK. Then Elijah proceeds either to go to sleep or sit there and exhaust his stupor, OK. So much so

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that God has to kind of divine Uber Eats meals to him via an angel. OK. Um, Elijah seems rather down, OK. Um, considering his sorry state, the most likely assumption is that

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something terrible must have happened to him, like maybe he made a B in the class or something, OK, or maybe he failed at some task that God had given him. OK. Elijah does state

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that he is no better than his ancestors or predecessors that is a group of people well known to let God down often. OK. Yet no mistake or issue is mentioned for Elijah. In contrast, in

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the preceding narrative in 1 Kings 18 that describes how Elijah, the prophet of Yahweh, has this climactic showdown, um, at Mount Carmel with the prophets of the false god, false storm god Baal,

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and this is the god of the infamous foreign queen Jezebel, OK, who is Elijah's nemesis, OK . During this contest, which involves some delightful trash talking by Elijah, which I would encourage you to

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read for yourself because I don't have time because I get like 10 minutes now for the sermon. OK , um, Elijah is able to call down fire from heaven, OK, while the bale prophets are

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not able to do so and so Elijah wins and he wins big, OK, so big. In , uh, not as well known part of the biblical text, the people help Elijah put the rest

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of the bail prophets to death. OK, this is not right, OK. So then why is Elijah so despondent after he's just won an important contest , right? It can't possibly be because Jezebel threatens

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Elijah for killing all her prophets. After all, Elijah just got God to unleash fire from heaven. He can't be really that afraid of uh Jezebel, can he? So what is going on with this

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profit? So I'm gonna give you the kind of I'm a bibli, OK, so you're gonna get an exegetical answer first, OK. So the place where he flees to, OK, under a bro

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broom tree offers some clues, and I did look up what a broom tree was. OK. And broom trees are known for, uh, two things for their nice shade, OK? And for their

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long burning quality charcoal made from its wood, OK ? That is, broom trees are associated with hot things or with fire, OK. And so when we think about the association between the fire and the

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brewry and also the fact that Elijah flees right after his victory where he calls on fire from heaven, it seems that his running away, his sadness, all of this seems to be connected to the preceding

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prophetic showdown that he had with the bail profits, OK, the showdown which he weirdly won. OK , so it seems that it's his success that led to his despondency. OK. Now initially this feels

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pretty illogical, right? This feeling sad after doing something, achieving something thing, OK? But I found that when I like looked at Google, OK , the answer to all things, uh, that

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this is not uncommon. OK, so post-achievement depression , arrival, fallacy, summit syndrome, destination disease , success, hangover, OK, these are all terms, OK, for this feeling of deflation and

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sadness that come after some kind of achievement. For those of you who are about to graduate, you might feel something like this afterwards, OK. Elijah , I think, is feeling something similar, OK

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? But I wanna draw out possibly some of the reasons why he might be feeling like this. And I think that Elijah is sad after his victory because he realizes that his achievement and success, well it

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didn't really do very much. Or as he puts it, when he finally gets a chance to talk to God on Mount Hora, I've been very zealous for the Lord, but the Israelites have rejected your

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covenant, torn down your altars, put your prophets to death. I'm the only one left, and now they're trying to kill me too. Translation. I worked really hard. I succeeded, yet it

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did not seem to make a bit of difference. That is Elijah when he returns to his world after his very successful showdown, realizes that the world has not changed his loved ones remain dead, the foolish

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people who he serves while they remain foolish, and the corrupt threatening rulers while they remain corrupt and threatening and still ruling. Nothing has altered. Everything remains the same. The arc of history bends well,

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according to Elijah, it doesn't, there is no arc. To this complaint, God gives a profound . Answer. Everything changes. And relatedly, everything comes to an end. And like all good teachers

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and all good showmen, God does doesn't just say it, he shows it. In the famous scene , God displays to Elijah one terrible, godless thing after another. First, a powerful wind that's strong

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enough to break rocks, then an earthquake, then finally fire. That is, God shows Elijah a succession of scary and destructive things, things so awesome that sometimes God was take was set to take the

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form of these things. This is why the text keeps telling you, but God was not there. God was not there. God was not there. God puts on the, uh, these harrowing things

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on display, a kind of superfluous parade of monsters in which God is absent, OK? A superfluous parade of godless monsters. Does that remind you of something? So one after another of these. And

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in so doing, God shows Elijah that even the most harrowing and frightening things that they change, they go from being wind to an earthquake to a fire . And finally, No matter their fearsomeness, no

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matter their power, they all subside and come to an end. Um Buck up, the text says . Yes, things look like a dumpster fire. OK. But all the dumpster fires come to an

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end or put out eventually. Considering this message, it's unsurprising that God tells Elijah in this kind of show and tell, OK, after the show and tell to appoint a new leader to replace Ahab and

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Jezebel, to appoint a new prophet who will replace Elijah. OK, that is God tells Elijah to prepare for the end not just of these corrupt and powerful rulers but also of Elijah himself. Elijah as

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well as his enemies, all of them will change all are temporary. OK Um, the text as usual does not tell us how Elijah felt about this message, but I can kind of guess. OK

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. That all changes, that all things come to an end. That message is both hopeful and terrible . OK. Hopeful because all the terrible things in the world, the suffering, the cruelty, the

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deportations, the destruction, the threats and the people making them and causing them, all of these things will come to an end eventually. OK. And yet, The knowledge that all things changed and that

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all things come to an end when you think about it a little bit longer, you realize that this is kind of also super depressing. OK. The bad things will go away, true. But it

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also means that all the things and the people and the creatures that we love those that we care about . That they too will change, and that they too will also come to an end. As proclaimed

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by a wise source, the internet, OK. There will be a last time for everything. And most of the time, you won't know that it's the last time. That'll be a last time.

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There probably was already for most of you a last time you played with your favorite toy, the last time you put your child to bed, the last time you hug your partner, the last time you

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see your parents, a last time you cuddle with your cat. OK. The last time you will sit in a seminary class. There is a last time for all things, even things we love and

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cannot bear to part with. That sucks. That all things change, that all things end. This is one of the uh most comforting and also one of the most challenging ideas to accept as a human

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being. So difficult, in fact, that some traditions such as Buddhism, note that it requires daily practice, OK, that daily we should remind ourselves that change is constant and that temporaris guaranteed. Or

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as the Bible so eloquently puts it in James 4:13 15, what is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time. And then vanishes. So then what remains, you may

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ask, what do we do in the face of this except maybe to learn and to accept? Well , I think 1 Kings 19 might also provide an answer to this question as well. We are told

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that after the wind and the earthquake and the fire , a coda mama daca, you know, this is usually translated as a small still voice or sometimes a sound of sheer silence or a gentle whisper.

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These are the various translations. I would translate it slightly differently. OK. What remains? Where can God be found? According to the Bible. Call the mama the car. In the astonishing silent hum

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. Of the present moment The right now How lucky we are to be alive and to be able to