Jonah 1:17
And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Tag: A Life Ring is not a Bad Thing
Jonah is a prophet who was given a mission by God and for God. He was supposed to go to a wicked people (the Ninivites ... they were know to skin their enemies alive) and preach God’s grace to them. But, frankly, Jonah did not want them to have grace. Jonah wanted them to burn in hell. In his running away from God he finds himself in a bad spot and suddenly tossed into the see by those he had thought would give him transport away from Nineveh. Imagine being tossed into a sea. Even if you CAN swim, you can’t swim long enough. You will die from exposure, thirst, hunger, sharks, etc. Much to our dismay, God sends a big fish (not sure if it is a whale or what) to swallow Jonah. It would be a natural response by Jonah, and the reader of the story, to think that, “I have gone from bad to worse.” Yet, this is not really the case. The fish DID swallow him and that can’t feel good. Who wants to go through and ordeal like that? Yet, the fish was not a bad thing, it was actually a life ring. This was God’s rescue plan for the disobedient prophet. Jonah would have preferred a Carnival Cruise ship coming up along side him and offering him a State Room on the upper deck. Yet, that is not what was in God’s plan. God wanted to provide Jonah a place to reflect and to refresh, alone. Jonah would have no one. He would be in the belly of a great fish along with everything else that was in the belly of the fish from the days of eating before. It was not a place he would choose, but Jonah did choose to make it a worship center. In the next chapter, while in the belly of the whale, alone and not certain of his future, Jonah choose to worship and commune with God. Jonah didn’t see the fish as a bad thing, he saw it the way it was intended, a life ring from God to find time to reflect, refresh, and re-commit his life to the sovereign God who provided the fish. We can often find ourselves in bad circumstances and believe the circumstance is a bad thing. But, from God’s perspective it is a life ring to put us in the exact place to hear God and to worship God and to have Him (and not other things or people) at the center of our lives. Turn God’s life ring into a worship thing.
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