Praying in the Belly of a Fish - October 14
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 119:1-24; PM Psalm 12, 13, 14; Jonah 1:17-2:10; Acts 27:9-26; Luke 9:1-17
Today’s Reflection
When last we left Jonah, he was being thrown into the sea by shipmates who believed that the seas were stormy because Jonah had disobeyed God by sailing with them to Tarshish instead of going to Nineveh, where God wanted him to go. God wasn’t done with Jonah just yet, so he sent a large fish (some say a whale) to the scene at just the right time to rescue Jonah and thereby keep Jonah from drowning in the stormy sea. But Jonah doesn’t end up hitching a ride on the big fish’s back, holding onto its dorsal fin as it delivered him safely back to the shore. That would be too easy. No, Jonah gets swallowed up by the fish, where we are told he spent three days and three nights in its belly.
Of course, it doesn’t really seem possible for a person to live for 72 hours with no fresh air inside a whale’s stomach. But let’s think about what the story is telling us here, reading Jonah’s experience as an allegory for people who are experiencing trouble and who are, on some level, trying to run away from God or from a sense of divine purpose for their lives.
Jonah is suddenly forced to stay inside for an unknown amount of time. He cannot see where the fish is taking him. He cannot predict whether he will ever be able to get out of the fish’s belly. He just knows that he is probably safer inside this fish’s belly—dark, wet, and isolated as it is—than he would be outside in the stormy sea, or aboard a ship full of desperate shipmates.
And what is there to do, really, trapped inside all day, against his will, alone with his thoughts? As we read today in the second chapter of the book of Jonah, there’s lots of time for Jonah to reflect and to pray. We find Jonah reflecting deeply on how he has ended up in this seemingly hopeless situation. As we hear Jonah praying to Yahweh from the belly of the fish, we hear both a prayer of lament and of hope: “I called to the LORD out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.”
Jonah is acknowledging here how he is in distress, a situation that feels like the depths of hell, or the most extreme separation from God. Not surprisingly, Jonah—like many of us when we face desperate, stressful situation—points the finger of blame: “You cast me into the deep… and the flood surrounded me.” And then, Jonah turns to describing how he feels, alone in the belly of a fish in the middle of the sea for an as-yet-unknown period of time: “The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head.”
But then, just as Jonah is describing how he “went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever,” his story and his prayer begin to take a hopeful turn: “yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you, in your holy temple.” It was when Jonah remembered that God was still with him, even in this dark, isolated, prison-like place, that he began to recapture a sense of hope, a sense of renewed purpose: “But with the voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the LORD!” And it is just then, when Jonah makes that turn toward hopefulness and voices his renewed belief that God can deliver him that God, in that very moment, offered him deliverance: “Then the LORD spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.”
I wonder what we can apply from the allegory of Jonah and the whale to our own current situation. We are continuing to live in a global pandemic. For months, we were all trapped inside our own whales—the places God has given us to be safe from all that is harmful to us out in the world of unseen coronavirus lurking about in people and places that would normally seem familiar and safe to us. Many of us are still spending much more time at home than we normally would—and some of us are continuing to isolate most of the time, to stay safe from the virus.
Like Jonah, with more time isolated and at home, our usual routines upended, we have found that these are conditions that have turned us toward prayer and reflection. We have prayed to God in fear and in lament. But, as with Jonah, these prayers of lament and even blame have the potential to reorient us back toward hopefulness, toward a renewed faith in God’s mercy and deliverance that we can take with us when we finally get out of the belly of this giant covid fish.
—Becky+
Questions for Self-Reflection
How have you found your prayer life has changed during the pandemic? What have you learned through this time in the belly of the covid fish that you will take with you when we are back on dry land, after the pandemic has passed?
Daily Challenge
Take some time this week to reflect and write down—whether in a journal or on your laptop or even the notes app on your phone—what you have learned about yourself, about others, and about God since March 2020. Put what you write away in a place where you can come back to it later, when the pandemic is in the past.