Jonah 2:1
Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish.
Poor Jonah. He played the game we’ve all played since Adam and Eve hid from God in the Garden. He got the silly notion in his head that God couldn’t see what he was up to if he ran off and hid. When God asked him to go preach to the Assyrians at Nineveh, he couldn’t stomach the proposition. It was not that Jonah was afraid that the Ninevites wouldn’t listen, it was that he feared they would. He wanted the Assyrians wiped out, but God wanted them saved. So Jonah booked passage on a ship out of town and figured God wouldn’t be able to find him once he was out of radar range. But God is not so easily eluded. Jonah wound up overboard and down the gullet of a big fish before he could say “God’ll never find me here!” It was only then that Jonah began to consider his own need for a savior. For he suddenly discovered that God was the God of the desperate. And so he prayed from the belly of the fish and God heard him. But God didn’t just hear him, he sent him back on his mission: to deliver the Ninevites from their equally desperate entrapment in the belly of sin. If you are hiding from God today, come on out. He loves you. If you are desperate today, remember that God hears your prayers just like Jonah’s. And if you have someone you haven’t forgiven yet, ask God to help you forgive them so that they and you can be freed, just like Jonah and Nineveh were.
