In this story, we see Elijah right after the decisive drama on Mount Carmel, where God’s miraculous fire defeated the prophets of Baal. God’s power has been proven, and the people have acknowledged God as their God. What could be better?

We would expect Elijah to be elated. Instead, we find him despondent. King Ahab—backed up by Jezebel—is still on the throne, and Elijah knows the people of Israel will go along with Ahab’s ways. And Jezebel, seeing her prophets dead, threatens Elijah: “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them” (1 Kings 19:2).

God is in heaven, and it is he who lit the altar fire, but Jezebel still wants to call the shots. Elijah, the heretofore dauntless prophet, is afraid, and he heads into the forbidding wilderness of Beersheba. Exhausted physically and emotionally, he sits down under a broom tree and asks God to let him die. "'I have had enough, Lord ,' he said. 'Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors'" (v. 4).

But God isn't about to let his prophet give up in fear and depression. Strengthened by food delivered by angels, Elijah undertakes a long journey. He travels all the way down to where God had covenanted with the Israelites and given them his law—to Horeb (or Sinai), the mountain of God. If there was a holy place on earth, this was it.

Elijah climbs up the dark, forbidding mountain and goes to sleep in a cave. Either during his sleep or when he wakes up "the word of the Lord came to him: 'What are you doing here, Elijah?'" (v. 9). What a strange question. But it gives Elijah a chance to deliver his "poor me" speech: "I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."

God instructs Elijah to go and stand at the mouth of the cave, adding the dramatic announcement, "the Lord is about to pass by." First to come is a terrible wind, obliterating everything in its path, "but the Lord was not in the wind." Then a powerful earthquake shakes the mountain, followed by a great fire. Again, the Lord is in neither of these. It's at this point that Elijah detects a barely audible, "gentle whisper." Immediately the prophet recognizes the voice and presence of the Lord.

God repeats his question, and Elijah gives the same answer. But this time the Lord gives Elijah two things to do. The first is political: to anoint Jehu as the next king after Ahab, for God has determined to destroy Ahab and his family. The second is to take on a companion and successor, Elisha. Two anointings announced, and Elijah's defeatist melancholy is gone. Even if there had been, to cite Elijah's extreme exaggeration, no one else left, God was still on the throne.

The "gentle whisper"—the "still, small voice," as it's sometimes translated—teaches us to make sure we aren't looking for God only in sweeping, dramatic actions. God is often in the gentle whisper—in the seemingly small and insignificant, as in a baby born in a stable and laid in a manger.