The Prayer of Jonah: Part Three

Who am I kidding. I cannot not blog, even if I shouldn't be, even if it's Holy Week. This verse was rattling around in my head yesterday as I tried to muscle a single pair of shoes out of this Wasteland Binghamton, as I visited every single store I could think of with all the children in tow, as I wondered if maybe God hates me and doesn't ever want me to be happy again.

Verse Three

For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.

What happens when it's Because of God that things are going so poorly for you? Setting aside for a minute that we know that Jonah is in trouble because he disobeyed, it's not a random thing that he finds himself chucked over the side of the boat, we can trace the clean line of events and choices that led to his sinking under the waves, setting those reasons, just for a moment, to one side, what do you do when you can lay the trouble at God's feet? If it's clearly God's Fault, or we might better say God's Responsability, what ought you to think, or do?

I think the Usual Thought, when we think God is responsible for something, is to say, being careful to avoid profanity because this is a family friendly blog, in the cleanest way possible, “Um,…..No……That……I'm not going to believe in or be with a God who would do that.” And I think that this Usual Thought is in view, even when whatever it was can be traced, say, to human disobedience and sin. When someone shoots up a school, and clearly the person was at fault, we Usually still say, Why did God let this happen? Even more also with natural catastrophes like floods and pestulences and earthquake and fire and Ebola.

When we judge, for whatever reason, that God did something we think he shouldn't have, or didn't do something when he should have, we get angry and chuck him. So notice, most interestingly, that God here, was the angry one, and chucked Jonah in the water. And that Jonah says, essentially, 'I was in the depths, Oh Lord, I was perishing, I called out to you Because you cast me into the water.' You did this And So I cried out to you. For Help. Not in anger.

You did this God. Save Me.

I think that Jonah gets to this posture, this attitude, this wanting to be saved by the very God who struck him, for two reasons. One, he knew God before. Even though he decides to disobey, he knew who God was and loved him. This is where I am All. The. Time. I know God. I love him. I am known by him. I don't set out every morning to be awful. I just do it anyway without trying. I know perfectly well that I could be obedient and trust him and not be awful, but I don't want to. So I don't. And then things go badly. When, then, as is necessary, God allows bad things to come my way, because I know that he loves me, the bad things work to turn me around and make me sorry. That's what they are for, for discipline and rebuke. That's what's going on with Jonah. But supposing Jonah hadnt sinned and God just chucked him in the water for no good reason that Jonah could see? I think he would have still prayed the prayer, 'You did this, O God, please help me,' for the second reason, which is that He Fears God, in a good way.

Fear produces knowledge, but we like to go at it the other way, knowledge producing fear. Don't go running out into the street, we say to our children, hoping the knowledge will produce action. But then the little suckers make a mad dash for it anyway, because they don't fear. If they feared, rightly, they wouldn't run into the street. Jonah, even though he didn't act like it in the beginning, really did fear God, and so he knew, he had knowledge, and that knowledge gave him the ability to cry out to God.

If you're not a little afraid of God, you will think you have other places to run. But in the end, there is only God, and he is bigger and stronger than you. There isn't anyone or anything else that's going to be able to help and save you, especially if the reason you're in a pickle is because God put you there. You might better cry out to him, because only he can save you, and he will, even if it doesn't seem fair.