December 13

Turned Back Again

The dish comes round and you pass it on, and the talk stays with the roads and the drive up. If someone at that table does not believe what you believe, and both of you know it, the evening offers no opening for whatever you would want to say.

Most of us have someone like that, and we carry them into the season with us. Elijah prayed for a nation that had mostly gone the same way, and what he asked for is worth reading slowly.

He stood at an altar with water standing in the trench around it, in front of a crowd that had been giving its worship elsewhere.

At the time of the evening offering, Elijah the prophet came near and said, "Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Hear me, Lord, hear me, that this people may know that you, Lord, are God, and that you have turned their heart back again."

Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said: The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God.

1 Kings 18:36-39

Let it be known, he prays, that the Lord is God in Israel and that he himself is a servant acting at God's word. Then he says it again with the crowd in view: hear me, that this people may know. Elijah wants the people back, and he tells God so.

One phrase at the end of the request is easy to read past. He asks them to know that God has turned their heart back again. The returning is God's own work, credited to him before there is the smallest sign of it. Elijah sets them before God as those he is already bringing home.

The last verse puts its attention on them. The people saw, and fell on their faces, and said it twice over. The fire was how the answer came; the people were the answer.

Carmel leaves something open, though. The crowd had to go on saying the Lord is God once they were off the hill, on days when nothing was burning, and Elijah had asked for a returning that holds. That part of the answer took far longer than the fire, and it came as a birth. God came himself to turn hearts back and to make the turning hold. That is what December is for.

If you sit down at a table like that in the coming weeks, with the dish in your hand and the conversation on the roads, there is something to be done that needs no opening at all. God is able to turn the heart of the person you have in mind, and Elijah's prayer hands you the words for asking it. They can be prayed silently, with the food still going round. God heard that request at the altar, and he hears it at the table.

Lord, you are God. Hear me for the people I love and cannot persuade. Turn their hearts back again, and keep me steady while I wait.