Summer At Sea: Week 8 Day 2

JONAH 2:1-9 ESV

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying,

“I called out to the Lord, out of my distress,
    and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
    and you heard my voice.

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

4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away
    from your sight;
yet I shall again look
    upon your holy temple.’

5 The waters closed in over me to take my life;
    the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about my head.

6 To the roots of the mountains I went down,
    to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.
Yet you brought up my life from the pit,
    O Lord my God.

7 When my life was fainting away,
    I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer came to you,
    into your holy temple.

8 Those who pay regard to vain idols
    forsake their hope of steadfast love.

9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving
    will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
    Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

Now Jonah had what he wanted. He’d been taken by the fish to the realm of the dead and covered by the judgement of flood waters. This is the farthest from God a person can get, yet this also marked the point in all of the book of Jonah where he was the closest to God. This prayer of repentance that we read today meant he was turning around, changing his trajectory to align with God’s will.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes, “progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn then to go forward does not get you any nearer.” It’s an important reminder in a world that values momentum as the most indispensable tool for winning, that if we aren’t pointed in the right direction it doesn’t matter how fast we can go. Fortunately, we are loved by a God that, no matter how far we go in the wrong direction, He is always with us waiting for us to turn around.

Today, give thanks for God’s faithfulness; give thanks that it will lead you out of distress.