Meditation on 1 Kings 19:15–16, 19–21
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown
Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford
July 6, 2025
I met a woman named Vickie yesterday, who shared her faith story. I interviewed her as part of my work on the Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry. She has applied to serve as pulpit supply, offering her gifts and talents to the 60 or so Presbyterian congregations on Long Island.
She has served as an elder in her Presbyterian church since 2002. She has served on various committees, such as Children and Adult Education, the Cemetery Committee, Building and Grounds, and Community Outreach. She has had the “privilege of working on and leading Bible Study programs,” she says, Vacation Bible School, Youth Group, Mission Trips, and her church’s first Women’s Retreat. She has served as liturgist and most recently, completed the Presbytery’s preaching class for elders.
There’s more.
She didn’t grow up Presbyterian. She grew up in a family “where you were either a devout Catholic or Jehovah’s Witness.” She remained in both these worlds until adulthood, not usually celebrating Christmas or birthdays, being taught, as a young person, to take her faith out into the world, going door to door, two by two, with her Bible, knocking, waiting, and hoping for someone to welcome them inside.
When she grew to be an adult and struggled in a marriage that wasn’t healthy for her or her children, she came to a fork in the road. She decided to leave her husband. Because of that decision, she was excommunicated from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She would be separated for years from her mother and sisters, who were not permitted to speak with her.
Vickie was on her own, working full time, caring for her children, and longing for spiritual answers to life’s important questions. She came to a moment, she says, of reaching out to God, as she had never done before. She started to pray. And though her life was still a “mess,” she says, the Lord showed her the way. “I finally followed Christ,” she says, “to my home, here in the Presbyterian faith.”
All of us have a testimony to share. Our stories may not be as dramatic as Vickie’s, but they are no less miraculous. One day, we were struggling with doubts. And one day, we began to seek God and believe. We started on a journey of discovery and relationship with the Lord and God’s people.
In our reading in First Kings 19, we hear another dramatic conversion story. Elijah has been a warrior for the Lord. He has fought the pagans in the royal court, including Israel’s Queen Jezebel who persuades the king and much of the nation to worship the Canaanite god Baal, a deity of storms, fertility, and warfare. Elijah has come through a difficult period in the wilderness, fleeing and becoming so weary that he lies down under a broom tree. He asks the Lord to take his life. God instead sends an angel to give him food, water, and encouragement so that he can continue in his work for God.
But the Lord knows that Elijah cannot go on forever as God’s prophet. The Lord sees that Elijah needs a helper, a personal assistant, someone to mentor in the work of a prophet and eventually take his place. The Lord sends Elijah to a rural area, where he sees Elisha plowing a field with a yoke of 12 oxen in front of him. I often wondered why this detail would be shared—about Elisha controlling and guiding 12 oxen in a wooden yoke, all by himself. I think the answer is that this was hard to do! It was hard, hot physical labor, but challenging mentally, as well. If he had 12 oxen, then he was probably plowing a large plot of land, too. This was unusual. Most farmers didn’t have 12 oxen, which were the John Deere tractors of the time. They were lucky to have one or 2.
Imagine you are Elisha, probably a young adult as there is no mention of wife and kids. He’s a good, strong farmer, providing for his parents and extended family. It is subsistence farming back then. If the crop fails, the people go hungry. Elisha may have been an only child or at least an only son, because when Elijah lays the prophet’s mantle on him, Elisha responds, “Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.” He didn’t have any siblings to bid goodbye or to pass on the work of farming. Elijah immediately regrets his invitation, witnessing Elisha’s emotional response to the call. Elijah says, “Go back again, for what have I done to you?”
Elisha has already said yes to the call in his heart because he returns to his family, then, and makes difficult decisions that will forever affect their future and his own. There will be no going back home after he singlehandedly slaughters the 12 oxen, not leaving even ONE so that someone else can plow the earth and farm! Then he cooks the flesh of the oxen, using the wood from the yoke for the fire. Both equipment and livestock are now gone. Then he feeds his people—not just his parents, but his community. He eats with them before turning away from home, family, farm, and neighbors to follow Elijah and become his servant.
Talking to Vickie yesterday, I felt lifted and encouraged in my call and remembered how the Lord has been so faithful to me, all my life. But I have to be honest; I don’t enjoy my service to the presbytery as much as I enjoy being shepherd of this flock. My labor for the presbytery is often out of my comfort zone and challenges me to think about my own theology, my own beliefs about God and the church. It forces me to puzzle over 21st century problems that the Early Church never envisioned and worry about the future of the Presbyterian church on Long Island and in our increasingly secular nation.
But then I was so inspired by Vickie and her willingness to learn and grow and be used by God in new ways. The nearly 73-year-old woman never went to college, and now she has taken her first preaching course. She is willing, she says, to become a Jill of all trades.
All of us have a testimony to share and a journey to walk. Your story may not seem as dramatic as Vickie’s, but it’s no less miraculous. Let us share our stories and walk together.
The one thing that really stood out to me in her story is the welcome she received from not just one, but two Presbyterian congregations on Long Island. You, too, have been welcomed and embraced by Presbyterians! (So maybe we aren’t the frozen chosen, after all!) She was never made to feel like a stranger or outsider. She managed to fit right in; she rolled up her sleeves and got busy serving. Now she is seeking to be a leader of the Church that welcomed her and helped her grow in faith, hope, love, and witness. She is willing to pursue the education and training, which is about 5 seminary classes, to be eligible to serve as a Commissioned Ruling Elder, either in her own congregation, assisting her own pastor and serving her own church family, or in a small struggling church in our Presbytery that can no longer afford a full-time minister of word and sacrament.
Vickie shared that about two years ago she had a breakthrough in her journey of faith. She apologized to the Lord for not giving all of herself sooner. She was like Elisha, asking to care for her family first and THEN she would follow the Lord. This is what we all do. We have many good things that we can be doing in this world, and the Lord wants us to care for our families. But sometimes we use good things as an excuse not to do the harder things that the Lord wants us to do. That’s why we need to keep on seeking God in prayer.
When she was 71, though she had served the Lord since she was a young person, she finally surrendered her heart to God. She said, “I am giving you everything that I am.”
May her story inspire you to surrender not in part but the whole of yourself to God. May you be stirred to trust the Lord enough to say, as Vickie says, “Whatever time I have left, I am His. Fully. Completely. Wherever he wants me to go, I will go.”
Will you pray with me? Let us pray.
Holy One, we hear your voice calling us to follow your Son, our Savior, the Christ. But we hold back, afraid that offering our lives to your service may be too difficult, too uncomfortable, too much work. We are afraid of rejection by those with whom we would share our faith stories. We are afraid that we are not up to the tasks you are calling us to do and that maybe we lack the strength to follow faithfully, serving your people and our community with our gifts and talents. Thank you for inspiring examples of faith such as Vickie, here in our own presbytery. Bless her, Lord, as she listens for your voice and discerns her particular call. Bless and encourage all of us as we surrender our lives in gratitude, saying, “Wherever you want me to go, I will go.” In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
Sharing God's Love and Grace 