Jonah ch 1

We're all familiar with the first chapter of the book of Jonah. Jonah, already being a propht of Yahweh, receives a call to go the the city of Ninevah to preach against it. This is the only time in the Old Testament when a prophet is called to physically gto to a heathen nation to preach against it. When others such as Amos did this, they did it from the vrelative comfort of Israel's borders.

After receiving this call, Jonah does the exact opposite. He gets is feet going in the opposite direction and jumps on a ship bound for Tarshish, at then other end of the world from Ninevah. he probably thought he could run from Yahweh.

Long short short, Jonah gets busted by God, caught up in a storm, thorwn overboard to rescue the ship and gets swallowed by a fish.

It seems that it at least 2 ways that Jonah's story becomes our story as well. How often is it that God calls us to something and we decide we'd rather be doing something else. Maybe not something like going off as a missionary or that sort of thing. But God calls us to obedience...we run the other way to disobedience. God calls us to faithfulness...we put our faith in ourselves. God calls us to tithe...but we want a new bigscreen tv.

And yet God is there for us in the midst of our running. You see, the fish that swalloed Jonah was not a punishment but rather an act of grace. Jonah was sinking fast and gertting wrapped up in the weeds at the bottom of the sea. It is God's grace that sent a fish to rescue him. God comes after us when we run away but he often brings us back through an example of grace.

I wonder how many times I play the Jonah card on a weekly basis. Probably more often than I think or even want to realize. Iwant to be conscious of what God calls me to do and conscious at the same time of my tendency to go to Tarshish.