Jonah

“The captain went to him [Jonah] and said, ‘How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish” (Jonah 1:6).

“But the LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah…” (Jonah 1:17).

“Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (Jonah 3:9).

It is my habit. I glance around my apartment. Books straight. Things are in their places. I like leaving things neat—it is a symbol of having things “just so,” nice and tidy, and, ahem, under my control to some degree.

And then I step out into the world.

But really, I’ve already surrendered control—supposedly. I have given my day over to God. I confess sometimes I think of it as a “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to keep” prayer for the day. Protect me. Keep me. And if anything does go wrong, make it all better. My dues given to God, I step out in confidence.

But God is free. He is God. And the world I so confidently step out in is a world of free and fallen agents, a world that is fallen. The Waco wind whips and rips the door out of my hand, slamming it shut behind me.

Thousands of years ago, Jonah’s tidy life was upset by an unsettling command by God—“Go to the people who hate you Jews, who profane my name, who are powerful enemies, who are Gentiles and outside of my covenant.” (The idea of a prophet going to another nation was unheard of; if any Gentiles were to come to God, they had to worship in Jerusalem like the Jews and follow Jewish customs.) God’s freedom.

In Nineveh, Jonah boldly steps forth into a foreign city, on their ground, their territory, amidst a city that took three days to cross among a people who hated the Jews, and he proclaims their upcoming destruction. Perhaps he had never been afraid and just didn’t want to go to them (see 4:2). Or perhaps, having been saved from death by the Lord, he knows the Lord can protect him.

The Ninevites repent—“Who knows, God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (3:9). Who knows? Perhaps? It is God’s freedom. They deserved death and wrath. It is God’s freedom that makes grace possible. He is not bound to the laws of reap-and-sow, cause-and-effect, disobedience-punishment.

Jonah, too, deserved death. I forget how serious the sin of disobedience is, sometimes. Jonah’s is more blatant than mine, but sometimes, the tidiness of life just seems appealing…. But it is rebellion against the Creator. Jonah deserved death; disobedience demanded a verdict of destruction. The thunder roars with a drum roll, rolling waves march to bring him to his expectant execution, the lightning guillotine-flashes.

“’Pick me up and throw me into the sea,’ he replied, ‘and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.’” (Jonah 1:12)

God, in his freedom, intervenes. Salvation comes in the swallow of a fish; grace in the gulp of a giant creature.

Grace truly is a miracle that comes from the freedom of God, his transcendence above the complex universe. I deserved death and the verdict was done. God intervened, miraculously. I live daily in this miracle, just as crazy as a fish swallowing a man.

I can walk down the sidewalks, ignoring the little rituals of not stepping on the cracks. I am reading a book that speaks of the freedom in the world, the freedom of fallen agents, the arbitrariness of the world—it is provoking my thoughts of God’s sovereignty in suffering. Do the evil things of this world come from an enemy of God? Are they permitted by God? Is God responsible? The wind goes where it wills, the world whirls on its way. The world is wide, and I am small. But I live in the knowledge that if God has given us all things, how much will he not also, along with his son, give us all things (Rom. 8:31-32)? I live in the light of Romans—our assurance is done, finished on the cross.

“My heart is not proud, O LORD,

My eyes are not haughty;

I do not concern myself with great matters

Or things too wonderful for me.

But I have stilled and quieted my soul;

Like a weaned child with its mother,

Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, put your hope in the LORD

both now and forevermore”

(Ps. 131)

“I [Jesus] have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).