Soma's Extended Thoughts

Chapter Two of Jonah…

This portion reads like a poem, like a psalms specifically. Keep that in mind… Why don’t people pray in poetic form any more?

Click this bit of underlined text to read Jonah 2!, nifty ain’t it.

Now after that remember…

2nd Timothy 3:16-17 – All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

God talks to Jonah fairly directly and up to this point this is the first time Jonah has talked back to God, despite his many and ample opportunities. His path has been a down hill domino train of reasons to turn to God; starting with receiving and comprehending Gods voice directly to finally being swallowed alive by a fish and staying that way for three days.

Jonah recognized that God has placed him in this situation, he was “Hurled” by God; and like Psalms 51 he (in the end) finds reason to rejoice. He has seaweed wrapped around his face( the original seaweed facial… har har), he is inside a fish, and now he looks for God to help him.

Since this is Jonahs response to total banishment from God, I wonder how many people would have enough will power to not be broken completely by this point in the story. I assert that ninety percent of humanity would turn to God by now. There was documented church growth after the September Eleventh fiasco and most of those people were not directly effected. If in fact they had been thrown to the roots of the mountains, I am sure they would have had similar responses. The point is, most every one knows that they are under the command of a higher power, it is just a shame that God is forced to take drastic steps in order to grab our attention.

Often it is easier to cling to ‘worthless idols’ I.e our cleverness, our intelligence, our money, our skills and our positions. Question: would any of these things create a fish that we could live in for three days?

One thing that I truly don’t understand, what good is Jonahs life to God if he dies? What motivation does God have to take this dying man and save him… God could easily get another prophet, a better one I might add, and use that man. I am sure somewhere there is a dude with a plow behind an ox that would love to yell at Ninavites. But God wants Jonah…? The being that truly benefits from Jonahs bargain is Jonah, what’s in it for God?
The only answer I could find for this question shocks me truly; God cares so much about each and every one of us that he is willing to roll his eyes at the pathetically fleeing and now dying among us and offer his endless power to save us. People hoard power and only use it so many times to help people, God is willing to bend over backwards, and even create situations where we need saving, just to give us ample opportunities to recognize our puny-ness. He even John three sixteened us.

Jonah is also used as the perfect image to explain Christ to the Pharisees and teachers of the law. The end of Matthew twelve has an amazing bit of dialogue. Read that and think what Jonah must think of it! The fact that God could take such a rebellious moron and make such a wonderful sign out of his life is just further reasons why we should spend our life shaking our heads in disbelief at the love God has for us. I don’t fully understand why the sacrifice of his Son is not enough to make us do this any way, but, why do we still expect more proof? the truth is we do. So he gives us endless pictures of people royally screwing things up, and God taking that mess and making the most amazing things out of it. My God is truly a God of endless amazement and awe! God uses Jonah, the same guy we have been thinking is such a bungalow to be a physical representation of himself.