The times in our lives when we realize the need for redemption are often the conclusion to exhausting experiences. Maybe you’re coming out of a rough relationship, losing battles with addiction, or have been on the receiving end of some brutally honest feedback. If you reach a point where you recognize the need to break a cycle and make a change, God responds to that decision with a gift beyond forgiveness.

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.

To ancient peoples, the sea was the edge of the known world, a place where creation separated from the dominion of man, transitioning to a realm of death and chaos. It’s from that abyss that the great fish came to snatch Jonah, giving him exactly what he had set out to find, a place away from the presence of the LORD.

Last Spring, I became very ill and eventually found out I have a chronic illness. Some of the symptoms I endured felt like a storm inside my body and brain, and while going through this, I asked, “God, why are you putting me through this?”  It felt so unfair. Although it was a trying time, I learned more than ever to turn to God and lean on him.

During the storm that Jonah and the other Gentiles endured, it became evident to all of them that they were in this predicament because of Jonah’s unfaithfulness to God. Jonah took ownership of this and even decided to sacrifice himself to save strangers. He tells the other men on the boat to throw him overboard to help calm the storm.