Are you in the belly of a fish?

The story of Jonah is one many of us have heard since our youth.  Jonah is told to go preach to the Ninevites, a city practicing wickedness, and Jonah catches the next boat available heading to anywhere but Nineveh.  As a child, I had always assumed that Jonah feared for his own life and that was why he ran.  But the truth of the Book of Jonah is quite different.

Jonah thought he could run away from the task God had asked of him.  He then finds himself on a boat in the midst of a terrible and unexpected storm.  The passengers are terrified and pray to their respective Gods.  Jonah is sleeping when one of the men come to him and asks that he pray to his God.  Jonah confesses that he is the reason for the storm and tells the men to throw him overboard.  The men try to row toward shore instead, but when they find this impossible, they pray that God will not hold them accountable for their actions, and throw Jonah overboard.

The next part is the well-known part of the story where Jonah is swallowed by a giant fish.  He survives for three days in the belly of the fish and then is spit up on land.  He then goes to the Ninevites and warns them of the threatening destruction of their evil ways.  They repent of their sins and God has mercy on them.

What follows I found to be very surprising.  Jonah becomes angry and prays to God, "O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home?  That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish.  I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.  Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."  Jonah 4:2-3  Jonah leaves the city and sits in a barren place to sulk and, it appears, to die.  A vine grows up over Jonah and provides him shade and he is "very happy about the vine."  Then a worm chews the vine and it dies and Jonah is left in the blazing sun and a scorching east wind.  Again Jonah is angry with God.

"But God said to Jonah, 'Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?'

'I do,' he said.  'I am angry enough to die.'

But the Lord said, 'You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow.  It sprang up overnight and died overnight.  But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well.  Should I not be concerned with this great city?'"  Jonah 4:9-11

So I discovered that Jonah did not run out of fear, but because he did not want the people of Nineveh to be saved!  I find it so interesting a confession as it is believed that the book of Jonah was written by Jonah himself.  I wonder if Jonah had some personal issues with the Ninevites or if he just saw them to be so rotten that he could not handle them being saved.  I look at myself and think of those I withhold the Gospel from.  There are people whom I have deemed "unsaveable."  I thought my husband was not capable of becoming a believer.  I thought he was too comfortable with his lifestyle to consider a need for God.  I look at a lot of people that way.

My mom told me the other day that she was going to give my business card for the blog to some old acquaintances of mine.  I said, "Oh, they're not religious.  I don't think they would be interested."  I have wondered why I had said that ever since.  Why not give it to them?  Was I worried it would offend someone I don't even talk to?  Or did I deem them incapable or unworthy of salvation?  (Not to claim that this blog has the ability to save the lost.)

So often we limit the list of those we want to receive salvation.  Murderers, molesters, cheaters, or someone who hurt us are people we do not want to run into in Heaven.  Usually we draw the line of acceptable, "salvageable" behavior just a few feet past our own poorest actions.  The mentality seems to be if you have done no worse, than I am okay with you "getting in." Most think they are good enough to be saved.

The story of Jonah shows us that we are all good enough to be saved in the sense that we are all in need of salvation and it is not limited to any one group of people.  Jonah himself was no peach.  He certainly wasn't the loving-caring-for-others-in-need type.  At least not in this story.  He denied God's call.  He got angry with God over something that should have lead him to rejoice.  But God had great mercy on him.  God could have allowed him to drown.  He could have allowed the Ninevites to kill him.  He could have allowed him to die as he asked.  Yet God was so patient with him, waiting for Jonah to come to an understanding and showing Jonah how valuable his one life was and then comparing that to all of the lives in Nineveh.

Are you in the belly of a fish?  Is God calling you to share his news with someone you have deemed unworthy?  Could your current circumstances in life be a result of ignoring that call?

Pray that God would help you to share the Gospel unbiasedly as He calls us to do.  Pray that God would cause your heart to love those you struggle to love.  Pray that you could experience joy for every sinner saved.  The greater the sinner, the greater the grace.  Isn't that what makes our God so great?