Eat Something

Yesterday’s First Reading was about Elijah in the desert waiting to die.

It’s an odd scene, especially if you know what happened right before he decided to go out to the desert to die. Elijah had just worked an incredible miracle which proved that the God of Israel was greater than Baal. Obviously it makes sense that the Queen pushing for Baal hated Elijah, but what happens next is surprising.

Nothing.

No one really converted.

Despite the wonders God worked through Elijah, despite his faith and hope and courage, nothing really seemed to happen. Sure, the battle was won, but the war for the peoples’ hearts had barely begun.

Exiled and exhausted, Elijah waited to die.

I think many of us have experienced something like this. We accomplish some big task, and we expect big returns. We expect a raise, a promotion, a degree, a publication, a new relationship, a new social circle, a new life, and yet we end up with less. Sure, we get there eventually, but for the most part, the only thing we find is empty space where our great task once filled space.

It’s easy to forget just how much we’ve accomplished when we go back to the real world.

It’s easy to doubt our value after we finish what we were supposed to do and the effect is smaller than we expected.

“I don’t know what to do with myself,” I stared down at the keyboard in the corner imaging room. After two years, I finally sent the figures to my advisor. For the first time since joining graduate school, my mouse work was about to change. What into exactly? I had no clue.

I sat down in front of my computer and looked at my cell work.

As I looked at the images and counted the lysosome tubules, I thought back to my advisor falling out of his chair when I told him the results for the first time. I expected that moment to change the energy in the lab, and it did…for a day or two. Now I was looking at the results and lamenting the next steps.

Optimization.

Confirmation experiments that took a long time and told us what we already knew.

My motivation was shot, and I did not want to look at my old protocols again. Even though the mouse project was difficult, at least I knew the weight that experiment carried. At least, I thought they carried a lot of weight. Now that I finished the eight panel figure, I was not so sure. That’s the thing about science: years and years of work might end up as a single sentence in a textbook.

Talk about humbling.

“Do it with a grateful heart,” my mother used to tell my siblings and I when we complained about doing our chores. This was not very inspirational to the stubborn child I was. But as I grew up I started to grit my teeth until they turned in to a smile. In those moments, I realized just how important it is to go through each moment with gratitude.

All we have to do is take the first step. Even if we grimace a little, it’s better than sitting around.

Dear Reader, we rarely have something big or exciting happening in a single day. The big things come from several small moments, all building up to something bigger. It is our choice to be grateful for those boring tasks, those seemingly meaningless conversations, and those less than important responsibilities.

An angel gave Elijah some bread and water. Even then, Elijah chose to go back to bed.

So the angel gave Elijah a little more, and he finally had the strength to go on his way.

There’s something beautiful that we can all learn from this experience. So many of us are chasing highs. Sometimes it leads to exhaustion, the kind that we cannot seem to shake. If it’s a temporal low point, we know that we will overcome it. However, if we are experiencing a spiritual low point, like Elijah did, it seems unlikely that we will overcome it. We tell ourselves that maybe we just aren’t faithful enough to experience the spiritual high that we convinced ourselves we want.

But you are not the one who overcomes the hunger and thirst. That’s God’s job.

All we have to do is eat.

Just as we have to take small steps forward in order to overcome a slump in the workplace, in academics, or in social settings, so to do we need to take small steps in faith. When we stop chasing the highs, we start climbing up to them effortlessly.

A small prayer, a short conversation, a chapter out of a good book, an act of service, whatever it may be, all we need to do is take a small step forward.

And you don’t have to do it on your own.

Remember who gave Elijah the bread? An angel. Now, I know that we do not have the same relationships with angels in our post-modern age. Maybe we don’t have angels handing us stuff nowadays, but we do have friends. And as they said in my high school Kairos retreats, “A friend is a guardian angel in disguise.” God sends us souls who remind us of His love and to continue trusting in His glorious plan.

I have so many precious friends who have made it possible for me to sustain my faith life, including my Dear Readers.

But it’s not just enough

We have to eat.

At Mass on Sunday, Fr. Peter said, “Without the Eucharist we will wander aimlessly through the desert, never being satisfied.”

Jesus did not just give us His Body and Blood in a figurative way. He did not just give us these little pieces of bread and these sips of wine to remind us of Him in a nostalgic way. He did not die to become a role model in a spiritual way. He is The Way. He is The Truth. He is The Life.

The easiest small thing to do is to be in the presence of God in The Sacrament.

The easiest small thing to do is go to Mass.

It does not matter if you have never been or if you have not been in a while. You are welcome at our Table. You’re welcome in our Home….it’s your’s too.