Monday, February 22nd, ‘10

Monday, February 22^nd, ‘10

NO BETTER? WE’RE NOT EVEN CLOSE!

“It is enough! Now, Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers!” (1 Kings 19:4)

There Elijah lay under the juniper tree pouting about his miserable life, on the run from Jezebel, forgetting that he had just whipped all Ahab’s 850 prophets. In one chapter he drops from Carmel to the cave with a pit-stop at this conifer. Watch out for the morning after the big event. Shortly after the Dove lit on Jesus, the devil lit into Jesus. It always works that way. “Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall”. Elijah talked tolerance, “It is enough!” Then the talked suicide, “Now, Lord, take away my life…” Then he talked comparison, “For I am no better than my fathers!” Something inside him said he should’ve been better than his fathers. But like them, breaking faith in the wilderness, or going after strange gods in the days of Jeroboam or Ahab, he too lost nerve.

I’m not psychoanalyzing here. Elijah needed to pick himself up from under that tree; joy under the juniper. What does interest me is that relative statement about his fathers. Every generation should build on the successes or at least conquer the failures of the former generation. There should be no stagnation between successive terms. The anchor runner is handed the baton – he is expected to outpace the one who handed it to him. Moses turns the car keys over to Joshua who leads the people into the Promise Land. What a pity it would have been had Joshua taken the next generation on another forty-year go-round in the desert. The question is, are we better than our fathers?

And the answer comes with a grimace of disbelief, “No, we’re not even close”. Think of the World War II and Korean War generation, the men and women who turned America into the industrial, technological and monetary envy of the world. Will our sweat fill as many barrels as did theirs? How much blood have we sacrificed? Pre-Boomers and Boomers had serious morality issues but how does the VH-1 crowd of Generation-D, Digital, line up? No contest. In every category outside “computer gaming” we are flunking. Yet we see no Elijahs today prostrated beneath the juniper. Instead, I wonder if “forefathers” is even part of the vocabulary.

May I say, this generation is responsible to outdo its parentage? We have more information, more tools, with rising longevity, more time. Who before us had the power to text, tweet or e-mail messages to any country on the planet? Who ever had the comforts that we enjoy? Is there no interest demanded from the investment? Jesus was offended when He saw the fig tree bearing “nothing but leaves”. Sated with sap we’ve produced very little fruit. The head ought to hang, “Lord, I am no better than my fathers!” But that takes contemplation, something hard to do while flipping the remote through all those channels.