The Cutting Place
At a very young age, Michelangelo, the great Italian artist of the High Renaissance, recognized a fundamental truth of life. As a boy, Michelangelo sought to apprentice himself to a master sculptor. Chiseling away at the formless marble before him, this master stone cutter paused, looked his young, would-be apprentice in the eye, and said, “This will take a lifetime, you know?” To which Michelangelo replied, saying, “Yes, I know, but what else is life for?”
As a boy, Michelangelo understood that not only was he the stone cutter, but he was also the stone.
The prophet, Elijah, has so much to teach us about life and ministry. So much to teach us about how God chisels away at the things in our lives that are keeping us from becoming the men and women he is calling us to be.
Elijah’s ministry begins in the spotlight of King Ahab’s throne room in Samaria. The desert-dwelling country boy, wrapped in his camel-haired cloak, stands before the king and announces that drought is on the way. A physical manifestation of a spiritual truth because God’s Word is absent in the land.
Immediately after this prophetic announcement, God tells his servant to go and hide in the Kerith Ravine. Located on the other side of the Jordan River, where Elijah himself had grown up, Kerith is likely a hiding place the prophet knows well.
A canyon cut out over the years by a stream in the desert, probably a tributary of the Jordan River, Kerith will be the prophet’s lonely home for six months. He will drink from a stream that slowly dries up. He will be fed by ravens, unclean birds for the Jews, which feast on garbage outside the city walls.
With blazing heat in the daytime and bone-chilling cold at night, Kerith is no holiday at the Hilton for God’s servant. But it is at Kerith that God begins chiseling away at those things keeping Elijah from being the man God is calling him to be. Oh, and incidentally, Kerith in Hebrews means “cutting place.”
What is your Kerith, and what have you learned, or what are you learning, during your time there?
Thankfully, Keriths come and go in our lives. We’re not always in lonely places. Not always living day to day, just trying to get by, trying to survive. But the truth is that all of us have times set aside, reservations confirmed, so to speak, at The Cutting Place. And it is in that place that God does some of his greatest work in our lives. It is in The Cutting Place that God chisels away at things like pride and self-sufficiency. It is in The Cutting Place that God teaches us the difference between greeds and needs. Most important of all, it is in The Cutting Place that God prepares us for the days to follow.
Elijah emerges from Kerith, a better man, a better servant of God. And yet, even then, God is not finished cutting away the fleshly stone from his prophet’s life. For the next three years, God’s servant will remain hidden in the last place King Ahab would ever think to look.
And that's the subject of my next post.
In Christ,
Dan
“Where is the God of Elijah? Overcoming Spiritual Drought” can be purchased on Amazon here.