Soma's Extended Thoughts

Jonah Chapter One…

Read Jonah Chapter 1 on-line!!! cool beans hu?

It is hard to come at Jonah from a modern angle… seriously, who gets eaten by a fish? The one constant theme, however, that one could pull from this story, is the character of God, and our reaction to his commands.

Often when the phrase “the character of God” is mentioned it is actually referring to His attributes, however I also want to use this phrase to talk about God as a character, a being in the story that interacts with the other characters, and as amazing as it sounds, this character is present today interacting with us!

God the being, the one who in verse 1 Commands Jonah to leave his home and travel to a place infested with wickedness and tell them that they will be judged for that lifestyle, is very well commanding the same sort of things from us today.

I totally janked that image from another site, but as you can see basically Jonah goes in completely the opposite direction of where he is commanded to go. It is easy for us to condemn and call Jonah names like ‘doober’ or ‘moron’… however, think introspectively and decide if you would have gone to Niniveh. I, personally, would have just stayed put in good old Joppa and watched Lost or something, completely ignoring the voice of God.

Any who… I think the most interesting point about the first chapter of Jonah is what God does in reaction to Jonah’s complete betrayal of God’s will. God chases him around and even uses Jonah’s disobedience to demonstrate His power to the sailors on the boat.
Look closely halfway through verse 6… Jonah falls a-freekin-sleep! In the middle of the God breathed storm! This just proves Jonah’s ambivalent attitude toward Gods wrath, I am not sure if, at this point, he believes himself to be out side of Gods power (because he had left Judah) but God certainly convinces Jonah of His far reaching and always present power.

You know that feeling in the back of your mind that you might just be the one responsible for something.. i.e. a huge storm… well it takes a game of chance and well pointed questions to convince Jonah that the nagging suspicion in the back of his mind is true. Finally Jonah comes clean to his shipmates about the truth… and the truth of his God and God’s power over everything. Ironically his shipmates believe as soon as the truth hits their ears.

Now Jonah needs to convince them to throw him overboard, he does and to the relief of the other shipmen (and for further proof of God’s sovereignty) the storm subsides in to clear weather.

Oh ya, and a fish eats Jonah and he stays there for three days… ????

Now feel free to discuss in the form of comments regarding anything here or all the things not mentioned!