I Kings 19:5

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. REVELATION 2:2–3

Our Lord took His apostles aside when they were fatigued, and said, “Let us rest awhile.” He never drove His overtired faculties. When tired, He “sat down by the well.” He used to go and rest in the home of Martha and Mary after the fatigue of working in Jerusalem. The Scripture shows it was His custom. He tells us all—you, and me, and all—to let tomorrow take care of itself, and merely to meet the evil of the present day.

God does not chide His tired child when that weariness is a result of toil for Him: “I know . . . your hard work” (Revelation 2:2)—the Greek is “labor to weariness.” And what happened? “All at once an angel touched him.” There is no wilderness without its angels. Though Elijah knew it not, angels guarded him round about in his blackest depression and were actually placing bread and water at his head while he was asking for death.

A man may have to cry in the midst of an apostate community, “I am the only one left” (1 Kings 19:10); but he is always companied by legions of holy angels. But more than that. Who is this angel? It is the Angel of the Lord, the Jehovah Angel; the One who, centuries later in Gethsemane, had to have an angel to strengthen Him. He touched His exhausted child. Blessed exhaustion that can bring such a touch!

The angel did not give Elijah a vision, or explain the Scriptures to him, or do anything remarkable; he told Elijah to do the most ordinary thing, viz., to get up and eat.

If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal never to be depressed. A human being is capable of depression, otherwise there would be no capacity for exaltation.