We are journeying in the Whale of a Tale -- the best fish story ever, and one that changed the course of history for a lost people. As we do so we find that Jonah hit the “bottom” and turned around.
Sometimes it takes this very thing in our lives for us to make a turn around as well. We have to come to the end of our own efforts to save ourselves, our own efforts at impressing God, in order to surrender to God fully. In Jonah’s prayer in the second chapter, we encounter a prophet willing to let God be God and yet also declaring his confidence that he will yet live and praise God anew. This turn around is sufficient. Jonah is spat back onto the shore.
It seems incredible that this prophet really intended to thwart God’s call by fleeing, but God would not be thwarted. What might we learn about the character of God from this account of someone’s attempt to RUN only to find God ran faster than he could? What might this tell us about our own attempts to run from the identity and calling upon our own lives? What might we learn from this story about confession? What does it look like to Jonah and therefore to us? We are deep in the belly of the whale. This is our three-day visit to the tomb. It was to this very place that Jesus compared his own encounter with death. “Just as Jonah…” “so the Son of Man” Jesus said. This is that time period. Let’s not miss what God might like to do with the darkest moments of our lives. Let’s not lose touch with how God is at work. God won’t waste anything. And God plans to use everything.