began at Mount Sinai/Horeb in the days of Moses, he will bring to completion. Elijah may have (with good reason) given up on the people of Israel, but the Lord had not. As Samuel had put it generations earlier, “For the LORD will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the LORD to make you a people for himself” (1 Samuel 12:22). The people of Israel had a future, and therefore Elijah had work to do. And the LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness