Okay its beyond my bedtime. I don't know why but the Prophet Elijah has been on my mind a lot, particularly this morning. He was a renown prophet of God in the Old Testament.

One day he went up to a mountain and experienced all these trippy things, a violent wind, an earthquake, then a great fire but God wasn't in any of those, he found God in a whisper. It says eventually God took him up to heaven in a whirlwind, right in front of his successor, the prophet Elisha (S not J, I always get the two prophets confused. Its easy to remember when you think of it like this: J comes before S so Elijah comes before Elisha).

I wonder what did it feel like to be taken up into heaven, and what kind of man was Elijah really? Like I know he did all these amazing things, but I wonder what he felt about them. Was he ever in love? Did he have any friends? It says a lot of them were killed, his friends that is.

Then I wonder what it feels like to be so spiritual that you're just taken, transcending the physical world. Was it the best experience a human could have or did he forsake the physical for the spiritual and obtained something amazing, but different. i.e. he walked with the Lord in a closer relationship than most people will ever have, but did he ever know what it was like to love a woman? Or was it like Jesus says that someone who forsakes his life ends up finding it?

Then I wonder if Elijah was lonely. Eugene O'Neil is a playwright who wrote 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'. In it one of the characters, an alcoholic dying of consumption, muses that 'it was a great mistake my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish, as it stands I will always be stranger, one who does want, and is not really wanted." I think that's how it goes, I performed it for class and have it memorized, but it was awhile ago and it may not be word per word. But I wonder if that's how Elijah felt- alone, above, and apart. Was Elijah never really a part of humanity? How does that feel and what was life like for him once he went into heaven?

Labels: The Prophet Elijah and other musings