Today's Meditation - Tuesday, October 27, 2020 (Second attempt)

Today's Meditation 

Read Jonah 2:1-10

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, ²saying, “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. ³You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. ⁴Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?’ ⁵The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head ⁶at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. ⁷As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. ⁸Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty. ⁹But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”

¹⁰Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.

    It looks like my earlier post didn't publish, so I'm rewriting today's meditation.

    Jonah was angry with God because God had asked him to go to Nineveh.  To Jonah Nineveh was the epitome of sin and depravity.  They had sold out to the enemy and had exchanged a relationship with God for foreign influence, money, and greed.  Jonah did not want to go there, so he tried to flee from his responsibility and instead put those on the ship he was fleeing on, in peril.  When the sailors realized it was Jonah who had put them at risk they reluctantly threw him into the sea, at Jonah's own request.  They prayed to Jonah's God on his behalf and hoped for his safety, even when they knew that calamity had come upon them because of Jonah.

    Sometimes others pray for us even before we realize that we are in the need of prayer.  Sometimes others must intervene on our behalf.

    Jonah's prayer from belly of the fish (whale) is one that I think many of us have prayed after sinking about as low as we can go.  As Jonah realized that it was God alone who could save him or God alone who could allow him to perish in the belly of the fish, he finally knelt down in prayer.  It is a prayer that comes out of desperation and yet it holds within it, at that moment, a sincere desire for change, for life to return to "normal", for offering God a broken and contrite heart. 

    May God hear your own prayer when you are in desperate need, when you desire change in your own life, when you desire life to return to "normal", when you offer God a broken and contrite heart.