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Reflection on 1 Kings 19:1-18

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Scripture

“Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel- all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose lips have not kissed him.”

Observation

After the great confrontation on Mount Carmel in which all the prophets of Baal had been killed, Jezebel vows to kill Elijah. Elijah runs away.

After many days journeying, he arrives at Horeb, the mountain of God where he spends the night in a cave.

The Lord comes to Elijah, asking him what he is doing there. Elijah tells the Lord that he has been very zealous for the Lord, but now he is the only one left.

Then there is a fire, a strong wind and an earthquake, in none of which is the Lord found. Finally a gentle whisper, the still sound of silence, takes Elijah’s attention.

The Lord commissions Elijah to anoint Hazael as king of Aram, Jehu as king of Israel and Elisha as the prophet to succeed him.

Application

Elijah as come to the end of his tether as the “man of God.” He feels like he is the only one left who is loyal to the Lord.

The Lord takes Elijah out of action, leads him on a journey, and refreshes his spirit and his calling.

Elijah was not done with miraculous signs and wonders. He had seen all the spectacular stuff already, and he wasn’t in a place of separation from God. The Lord was talking to him and directing him before the fire, the wind and earthquake.

What Elijah needed was to re-focus his attention onto the Lord and away from himself. Although Elijah thought he was the only saviour in Israel, there were in fact over 7000 people who remained faithful to the Lord.

Sometimes when we feel like we are the only people on God’s team, we need to re-focus and see the great and marvellous things God is doing in and through the people around us.

Prayer

Lord, sometimes I lose my focus on what is important in serving you. I centre my attention on me rather than on you. Please help me to always look to you and to serve you regardless of how I perceive my own successes, Amen.

Save The Planet: Go Diesel

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So the leap in power costs caused by the insane rush to unreliable energy sources over the last decade is resulting in more diesel generators. You could have seen that coming, unless you are an environmentalist.

From michaelsmithnews.com

Queensland pub saves $1000 per month with diesel generator

Monday, 17 June 2019

A sign of the times.

Screen Shot 2019-06-17 at 9.12.10 am

Patrons at the Barcoo Hotel in Blackall are having their beers cooled by a diesel generator, thanks to ever-escalating power bills and an inability to reduce power usage.

The generator has been in use for around 18 months, giving publican Jeff Pohlner a chance to make comparisons with costs incurred when he was fully reliant on Ergon Energy to supply his power.

He estimates he’s saving around $1000 a month.

“My last power bill before I put the generator in was nearly $50,000 a year, a thousand dollars a week virtually,” he said. “Initially I was looking at putting in a back-up generator for when we get blackouts.”

The generator runs from 7am to 9pm from Monday to Friday.

Mr Pohlner said Ergon Energy had not offered any solution when he first approached them about his power bill but after the generator was installed, they came back to him with different tariff suggestions.

“I don’t know what they gained out of it but they dropped me down to 17.6 cents/kWh at night (from 19.6c/kWh), and put me on what they call a shoulder rate over weekends, which is full night rate instead of the standard,” he said. “So now I only have to run it Monday to Friday – it gives my generator another two years of life.”

He said he’d gotten the impression that Ergon didn’t believe he would make the change.

The generator cost $18,500 to install and has saved Mr Pohlner $17,500 so far. A bulk rebate is offsetting the cost of diesel.

Mr Pohlner said he bought 2500 litres of diesel at a time, at about 10c/l below the bowser price, and claimed 41.5c back in duty when his BAS was submitted quarterly.

“If I had to pay full bowser rate for diesel it’d be the same price as electricity but the point is, I’m getting a third of my money back in rebate,” he said.

I would say in the next 12 months we’ll be able to maybe be a bit more profitable- Jeff Pohlner, Barcoo Hotel

“That generator should last 12 years – power’s going to double over the next 10 years so the saving will be more.”

As well as five coldrooms and two freezers, the machine supplies power to hotel rooms and a coffee shop.

The business pays 14 wages a week and Mr Pohlner said if he hadn’t been able to cut his power bill he’d either have had to put his prices up or cut staff.

It gives the business the full standby power Mr Pohlner was originally looking for, in the event of blackouts.

“It just automatically cuts in, which paid off in the first month we put it in, because the town went out on a Friday night,” he said.

Mr Pohlner said he had looked at solar, saying that for $108,000 he could only get 40 per cent of the 60kW he needed.

“I got onto an expert at Griffith University about battery back-up – because we’re three-phase power we need 415 volts,” he said. “(The expert) said you’d need a lot of spare land and a spare quarter of a million too. And its life at best would be 7-8 years.”