"The fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil." – 1 Kings 18:38
In 1967, missionary Jackie Pullinger moved to Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City, a place known for its extreme poverty, crime, and lawlessness. With no formal training, but with deep faith in God’s power, she faced immense pressure from the surrounding environment.. She wrote:
“‘It would be worth my whole life if you would use me to save just one,’ I told the Lord after walking over the legs of men lying in the narrow streets, straddling the open sewers. I soon found that nobody was listening to my preaching, but they were watching my life, so I began to practise what I call, ‘ordinary gospel’, sharing rice with a hungry old lady, taking a gangster to hospital after a fight, queueing overnight to register a young girl for school, paying someone’s rent, going to court with a triad who claimed to be framed.”1
Despite the odds, Pullinger believed God for miraculous transformations. She saw drug addicts set free, gang members find peace, and countless lives turned around.
Environments have a powerful effect on the lives of the people who live in them. The famine in Israel was bringing the already-cliché conflict between God and Israel to a moment of crisis. The people had been without water for too long. More importantly and less obviously (as it often is with such things), they were without God. In His place, they were “chasing the dragon2”–any local deity that offered a quick fix or a wild trip, and Baal, the local weather god, was the latest trend with the usual side-effects. And like water, people don’t last long without the God who loves and calls them. So YHWH stops the rain and sends his prophet to provoke a showdown with this punk “storm god.” Baal responds with a rain-check, while YHWH descends in fire, consuming even the non-combustible elements of Elijah’s altar. Between all the fantastic, brow-singing spectacles and bold trash-talk, least impressive is Elijah’s prayer. An ordinary prayer from a “human just like us” (James 5:17) precedes fire from heaven, water from the skies, and a dramatic flip in popular belief. Maybe God’s “anything” is just waiting for an “ordinary gospel” person to pray an ordinary prayer, asking God to make it possible.
Reflection:
- How can you stand firm in your faith amid opposition?
- Where do you need God to reveal His power in your life?
- How can Elijah’s boldness inspire you?
- Photo: An aerial photo of the Kowloon Walled City taken in 1989, by Ian Lambot – http://cityofdarkness.co.uk/order-print/01-aerial-view/Also found in the book City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City by Ian Lambot (ISBN 1-873200-13-7)., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56276674
- Art: Elijah in the wilderness, by Washington Allston, _QHY5MD3BaCeHA at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22141467
- Songs: “Trust in God” by Elevation Worship
- https://www.ststephenssociety.com/about-us ↩︎
- The title of Jackie Pullinger’s book, Chasing the Dragon: One Woman’s Struggle Against the Darkness of Hong Kong’s Drug Dens ↩︎