I used to sleep through anything - Jonah

I am writing this blog at 2:30 a.m. I can't sleep. I was awoken by a heart for a marriage and for a brother that I may have offended dung the day. So, I woke to read, write a short note to those and to ask God to intervene in their lives. Maybe it is my old age but I can't seem to sleep like I used to. I used to be able to let things go and fall so deep into a sleep I didn't know anything was going on around me. Now I wake if I think we are out of crackers in the cupboard. I would like to think it is a super sensitivity to spiritual things and I am so "in tune" to God's working in my life I hear His voice calling me like young Samuel the little prophet helper boy . But, I am not that way. In fact, I often miss when I offend someone during the day, much less allow it to bother my sleep at night. Jonah must have had the same problem. Read this verse in Jonah chapter one again: "But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship , lain down and fallen sound asleep" (1:5). Imagine the scene: Jonah is running from God, on an sixth century wooden boat in the middle of a sea that is beating the boat so bad the prior verse said the boat was about to "break apart." As I write this blog I am on a boat. I live on a boat. The wind is only slightly blowing as a result of a good storm that went thorugh hours ago. You can feel the boat as it is driven by the wind and yet yield held firmly in the slip by the four lines tied to bow and stern. I can't imagine Jonah being able to sleep on that boat. Yet, in the midst of those who are about to perish, that is what he did. We have many Christian's, who, despite the storm around them and the perishing souls close to them, are simply asleep in the boat. Instead of being sensitive to God's leading we are running away from His call and His mission for us and asleep. The storms of life are crushing the vessels of those we are near and we simply sleep like babies in the bottom of the sinking boat. It is time to wake up! Wake up or be tossed over board.