The Whale...and Jonah

I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole Jonah ordeal.  If you’re not Coptic (and seriously, if you’re not, what are you waiting for?), Monday marked the first day of a three day fast where we commemorate the repentance of the Ninevites. 

Background story: God told Jonah to go to Ninevah and tell them they’re all kinds of messed up and it’s time to repent.  Jonah says “eh, not feelin it.” So he buys a one way ticket to Tarshish, gets caught up in a gnarly sea storm, goes to sleep, wakes up, volunteers to be thrown overboard (knowing this was all his fault), gets swallowed by a whale, hangs out in the belly of this whale for 3 days, gets vomited out onto dry land, goes back to Ninevah, literally says one sentence, and then the Ninevites repent.  That’s the condensed version of an already short story that can be found here.

Every year, based on whatever sermon or Bible Study that you happen to hear, we concentrate on a certain aspect of this event.  Maybe it’s “Next time, listen to God the first time He tells you something,” or it’s “God is pretty good at hide and seek,” or maybe even “You never know what one sentence can do until you try it.”  But I started thinking about something else this time.

So there was this storm going on, and it was crazy.  The people on Jonah’s ship were throwing all their stuff overboard just to make the boat lighter.  We know it was a bad storm because EVERYONE was freaking out, even the captain.  And this guy probably has seen some wicked storms in his life.  So Jonah’s thinking, “crap, this is my fault.  God must’ve somehow knew I got on this ship to escape the mission He had for me.”  Jonah was a little naïve.  Now this is my favorite part: God sends a personalized taxi to pick Jonah up and bring him to safety, back on dry land.  Right?  Isn’t that what the whale did?  Maybe God figured the belly of an enormous mammal would be the only surefire way that Jonah wouldn’t drown in this violent storm.  And when you think about it, besides a submarine (which I don’t think were around back then), what else could have done the trick?  So God sends a whale-taxi to get Jonah and bring him to safety.  And I thought that was cool. 

I think sometimes we look at the whale as Jonah’s punishment.  I mean, it’s pretty nasty and ridiculous.   But without that whale, Jonah would have probably drowned in the sea.  So the whale not only saved Jonah, but it saved the Ninevites, too.  They wouldn’t have gotten to hear Jonah’s awesome (sarcasm) sentence if the whale wasn’t hungry that night.  We don’t give the whale enough credit.  Ok, that wasn’t serious.  But when we are going through one of life’s storms, and God uses something nasty or painful to carry us through it, then we should thank God for even bothering to bring us to safety.  Who cares how He did it, and who cares if it was unpleasant and smelled like fish; God loved you enough to make sure you were all right.

And that, my blog friends, is what I’ll be thinking about until I can eat meat on Thursday.