That great prophet Elijah, in the nineteenth chapter of First Kings in the Bible, is found in the most unlikely condition. He is sitting under a juniper tree apparently acquiescing to the suggestion that he should just give up. He says, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers." See I Kings 19:1-18.
In reality, Elijah was asking an impossible thing, because Life is God, and man is the eternal expression of divine Life. It is a false sense of life, a personal sense of life in matter—with its limitations, burdens, and problems—that we need to relinquish. We need to gain the spiritual understanding of God as the only Life, and therefore as the only life of man.
Jezebel was the queen at this time, and a worshiper of Baal. Elijah had just dramatically proved that Baal, together with all that Baal stood for, was powerless—no god. He had mightily demonstrated the power and presence of the one true God. Jezebel was enraged at this put-down and the subsequent slaying of Baal's prophets—something which, earlier, she had done to the prophets of the Lord. She sent Elijah the message that she would have him killed, as well, by the very next day. Elijah fled into the wilderness, where he finally sat down under a juniper tree in despair.
