The Runaway and the Big Fish

Do you know what it feels like to run away? To turn your back on someone who loves you and just go the other way, as fast as your legs will carry you?

Jonah did.

God had a job for Jonah. "Go to Nineveh," God said. "Tell them I see them. Tell them I want them to come home to me."

Now, Nineveh was the great capital of Assyria, the empire Israel feared more than any other. Its people had been cruel. They had hurt Jonah's people. And deep down, Jonah was afraid of something. He was afraid God might forgive them.

So Jonah ran.

He found a boat going the other way, far across the sea, as far from Nineveh as a boat could carry him. He climbed down into the bottom of the ship. And he fell asleep.

But you cannot sail away from God. There is no boat that goes that far.

A great wind came howling over the water. The waves rose up like mountains. The sailors were so afraid. And Jonah knew. This storm was about him. About his running.

"Throw me into the sea," Jonah told them. "Then it will grow calm."

They did not want to. But at last they lifted him over the side and let him go down into the cold, dark deep.

Down.

Down.

But God was not finished with Jonah. Waiting in that deep dark water was a great fish, sent by God, with its huge mouth open wide.

The fish swallowed Jonah whole.

Do you remember Noah, kept safe inside the ark while the flood raged all around? Now God kept Jonah safe inside a fish. For three days and three nights Jonah sat in its belly, in the dark, in the deep. And there, where he had run as far as running could go, Jonah prayed. "I am sorry," he cried. "I went down to the bottom of everything. And you reached me even here."

On the third day, the fish brought Jonah back. It set him down on dry land, alive, blinking in the sunshine, up out of the deep and the dark and into the light.

And now Jonah went to Nineveh after all. He told them, "God sees you. Come home." And they listened. The whole city turned to God. And God, who had been longing for them all along, forgave them. Every one.

Jonah, the runaway, was the very one God used to carry mercy to his enemies.

Now hold those three days in your heart. A man going down into the dark and the deep. Then rising on the third day. Then sent out to people who did not deserve to be saved.

Long after Jonah, Jesus pointed back to this very story. "This is my sign," he said. Because Jesus would go down too, deeper than any sea, three days in the grave. And on the third day he would rise, bringing rescue to his enemies as well as his friends, to people like you and me.

Jonah ran from the rescue, dragging his feet the whole way.

Jesus walked toward it with his arms open wide.