I did a brief internet search on the possibilities of being swallowed by a whale. There is actually a story about a man being swallowed by a whale and surviving back in the late 1800’s name James Bartley. While the story can’t necessarily be proven, it can’t be dis-proven either. Check out this part of the story where Bartley accounts what it was like:
Bartley recalled being swallowed by a great darkness, then slipping along a smooth passage until he came to a larger space. He felt slimy stuff around him and realized he’d been swallowed by a whale. He could breath, but the heat sucked the energy out of him and eventually he pass out. The only lasting effect of the incident was that the skin of his face, neck and hands was bleached to the color of parchment by the whale’Consider this for a while. I’m not going to say this story is true, but this is a whole lot worse of a situation than the tale we watched in Pinocchio when Geppetto gets swallowed by a whale. The reality of something like this is mind boggling. How did he breathe? How did the heat not suffocate him? Think about how the acids from the whale’s system must've eaten away at his body, causing unbearable pain. Think about the darkness, the stench, the suffocating…
Suddenly three days seems like an eternity. Now, I don’t want to spend too much time trying to know the “how’s” of God’s miracles, instead I would rather dig into the “why’s”. Why did God choose this rather elaborate method of getting Jonah’s attention? And why did He leave Jonah in the whale for 3 whole days and nights? Imagine a moment if you were Jonah, how long inside that whale do you think it would've taken you until you repented? I am going to assume here that after 2 minutes of being inside the whale, Jonah was most likely begging God to let him back out. In fact, I would assume that most of us would be promising God instantly that we would change, that we would obey, that we would never run away again. Maybe Jonah did, maybe he didn't, I don't know and the Bible doesn't say. What it does say, is that it took 3 days until Jonah finally offered up his sincere prayer of repentance and God rescued him from the whale. 3 days!!!
This got me to thinking about the Christian walk, and my own life specifically. As I look at my own experiences, as soon as I realize I'm in a bad situation, I call to God to help pretty much immediately. Sometimes it's sincere, sometimes it's half hearted. However, many times God does not instantly rescue me from the situation in which I find myself. Many times, instead, God works with me through it. Right now, we're going through a situation with a property that my wife and I own that we are unable to sell. It is costing us each and every month, forcing us to live pay cheque by pay cheque (what else is new?). We have no savings, no back up plans, and many months bills go unpaid due to lack of funds. My wife has taken on an evening job just to help make ends meet. We pray about this situation a lot. And yet, God chooses not to sell the property yet. It has been 2-1/2 years now of this type of living. Why won't He sell this property?
At first, we went through a stage of "where did we go wrong?" We analyzed our steps, scrutinized our decisions. We decided where we went wrong, and we prayed for forgiveness. And yet still the property remained unsold. So we did it again, and again. Each time, trying to be more and more sincere in our repentance. Maybe I haven't repented enough. Maybe I wasn't truly repentant. Maybe I wasn't repentant of the right sin. We gave our best, most sincere efforts and yet still the property remained unsold.
Of course, everyone always seems to go through the "why" stage in situations like this. Why will the property not sell? Why has this gone on so long? Why does God seem so quiet about the whole thing? Why did we do what we did? For us, it wasn't so much a "why don't you help, God" but more of a "why are we in this mess?" and "why haven't we been able to get rid or this property sooner?". So many questions started coming through our minds. We started re-evaluating every decision we had made for the past 2-1/2 years. Decisions we had thought were solid were now in "court" defending their case.
Lately, we have started to move towards a personal faith stretching revelation. Maybe God was trying to grow us in an area of faith. Maybe He wanted us to learn new aspects of our faith. So we focused on that, what did God want us to learn from this? So we tried to focus on our relationship with Him, where can we grow? Where can we learn?
Notice I said "we have started to move..." Yes, we are still in this predicament as I am writing this. I don't know the answer, and I may never know. God might choose to sell this acreage tomorrow. He may choose to never sell it. This is where Jonah comes back into the picture.
Do you not think that he probably went through some very similar stages while in the whale's belly? He most likely did cry out immediately for deliverance. Chances are probably pretty good that he then went into an analytical stage, and maybe even repentance for where he went wrong (don't get me wrong, this is a very important stage and we all must go through it thoroughly). When that didn't seem to work, I wonder if he did start the "why?" stage. Did he start asking God why he was in the belly for so long? After 3 days, I'm sure he was in a lot of pain, and very miserable. Listen to the way Jonah describes his experience. "Deep in the realm of the dead..." (Jonah 2:1, NIV), "...I have been banished from your sight..." (Jonah 2:4, NIV), "...seaweed was wrapped around my head..." (Jonah 2:5, NIV), "...To the roots of the mountains I sank down, the earth barred me in forever." (Jonah 2:6, NIV). These aren't light choice of words used by Jonah. He was in despair. He was beyond hope. I'm sure he hoped and prayed for a miracle, but logistically do you think he really saw a way out of his situation? It would probably not be too far off to assume that Jonah had begun to accept that this was the end of his earthly existence even.
However, something in Jonah's prayer seemed to trigger God's action of redemption. Through Jonah's prayer, he seems to shift from desperation to praise. I can't say what it was about Jonah's prayer or where his attitude was transformed exactly, but I did notice a couple of things that made me think about my own attitude.
First, he has a transformation of focus. Jonah begins focusing God and his holiness. "...yet I will look again toward your holy temple." (Jonah 2:4, NIV). And a little bit later on he says "...I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple." (Jonah 2:7, NIV).
Secondly, he is grateful for his experience and in the following two verses he says "Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you." (Jonah 2:8,9, NIV).
"And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land." (Jonah 2:10, NIV).
What was it about Jonah's prayer that signaled God's action to rescue him from the whale? While I don't want to venture to know God's intentions, I do notice here Jonah's focus on God's holiness and his grateful heart while still in the belly of that whale seemed to trigger his redemption.
Where is my focus? Is my focus on God's holiness? Do I have a grateful heart? It's not that I have forgotten my plight, or that it isn't important to me anymore. It's that I am more focused on who God is than where I am. Jonah had his issues. In fact, even after he was rescued and he delivered the message he still struggled with his own agenda versus God's. And yet in those 3 days he learned how to focus on God and not his situation. He learned to be grateful, to praise God in spite of what was going on, and to me that seems to be what God truly wants us all to learn while we battle our own "whales".
Look at your life. Look at all that you have to be grateful for and all that God has blessed you with day in and day out and praise God for it all. Can you focus on being grateful? Can you focus on God's holiness? I'm not saying that once you do that God will rescue you from your "whale", but I am saying that your "whale" will suddenly be a lot less worrisome. And don't forget, I'm learning and discovering this as I write this post, so I can't begin to pretend I have all the answers. Only that this is something I can pull out of what used to be a simple Sunday School story to me. God hasn't forgotten us while in our current situation. He isn't ignoring us either. Instead, I believe He simply wants us to lift our heads up. To take our focus off of where we are and to shift it up to who He is. And be grateful.
I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you.
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