Elijah and Elisha
I don’t know why I was there, I don’t know how I got there, all I know is that on that morning I woke up under a bush on top of the mountain, and I felt like I was going to die. I wish I had. My wife had died only a few days earlier, after a long and painful illness. I had watched her die, wiped the tears of pain from her eyes, rocked her in my arms when she wept in pain, and when the pain became everything, and her breath shortened and her eyes closed, then I wept and pleaded with Yahweh to take her fast, so that she would not suffer any longer. But he did not, and she faded before my eyes, grew visibly smaller as neither food nor drink passed her lips, and still her indomitable spirit remained in her poor, poor body. At last, as I slept the sleep of the exhausted, lying beside her, she slipped away without my even saying goodbye, and I was left crushed with guilt.
Our children helped me to bury her, but then they returned to their own homes, and I was left in our silent house with only a donkey and chickens for company. I had wine to drink, and neighbours brought bread, and fruit, but nothing could dull the pain. So I picked up a wine skin and walked. I don’t know why I came to the top of the mountain. Was it to be closer to Yahweh or as far as possible away from all that reminded me of her? Maybe I hoped that if I just lay down and drank to forget, the world would forget about me, and that would be that. Maybe, well there are lots of maybes, but none of them came to pass, because as I lay there under the bush with the hammers of the metalsmith hammering away at my skull, a group of men came up the path onto the summit, and rudely brought me back to reality.
After peeping around the foliage at them, I lay back down under the bush and hoped they wouldn’t notice me. Who comes up onto the top of a mountain just as the sun is rising? Who comes when the sun has not yet burnt the mist off, so that you still can’t see the world laid out at your feet? Only people who want to do something they don’t want anyone else to see. But this group of men were talking rationally and calmly. They didn’t sound like conspirators. From my place under the bush I saw the feet of one of the men move away from the others. Then I heard a gasp from the other men. I didn’t want to get involved, so I didn’t look, or rather I didn’t look until one of the men broke the silence.
‘Rabbi, what is happening to you? Who are those men talking to you? They weren’t there just now, so where have they come from?’
There was the murmur of a response then I heard;
‘Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Shall I build three shelters, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah?’
Whatever else I had expected to hear, and I have to say something about the Romans was high on my list, why did Moses and Elijah suddenly come into the conversation? I was intrigued, so I lifted myself up, and crawled round the bush, and found myself behind three men who had fallen to their knees, looking up at a fourth man facing me, who was a bright dazzling white. It wasn’t that his clothes were white, although they were. It wasn’t that his skin was white, although it was. It was that everything about him was an unearthly white. In fact I would go as far as saying it was a heavenly white. I looked closely at him, but maybe my eyes were more affected by the wine than I thought, as I could only see the one man they called the Rabbi. I couldn’t see Moses and Elijah. Well, they were long dead, so our Rabbi’s teach us, so how could he be talking to them here and now.
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