I find the story of Jonah full of surprises when I read it and try and see things as he saw them. Most of you are familiar with the story as told in the eponymous book of the Bible. He was called by the Lord to witness to the city of Ninevah. Jonah refused, and ran away to Tarshish; he reveals later in Chapter 4, after his ordeal at sea, that it was because his heart was hardened towards the Ninevites, saying, "Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm." It takes a pretty hardened heart to desire the destruction and damnation of an entire city full of people. It takes a pretty bold heart, or a foolish one, to willfully disobey God who has spoken to you. Jonah went to, "flee...from the presence of the Lord" (1:3). I am not sure where you could go to do that, but he boarded a ship to get out of town.
The climactic portion of the story is the tumultous storm that threatened to sink Jonah and his shipmates. The sailors apparently started the voyage as heathens, for as the tempest threatened to break apart the ship, "every man cried out to his own god" (1:5). They determined that someone's individual sin had brought this calamity on the whole ship, and cast lots to find out just who that person was. The lots implicated Jonah. His response was twofold: he told them that he was a Hebrew, who feared the Lord (1:9), and that he was indeed the guilty party, for he had fled the Lord (1:10). In verse 12, he says, "For I know that this great tempest is because of me." It would seem that the other sailors reasoned that if indeed it was Jonah's God that was causing the storm, then their other gods were irrelevant. They began praying to the Lord (verse 14) and they "...feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and took vows" (verse 16).
After Jonah decided that it was his sin that was threatening to destroy them all, he came to the realization that he would need to sacrifice his life to save the others. He may have understood that in such dire circumstances he would die no matter what; either they would all sink and drown, including himself, or he could be thrown overboard to save the others. Certainly the penalty for sin is death, and that concept is reinforced throughout the Bible. After Jonah established the causal link between his sin and the storm and sinking ship, he must have determined that his death would satisfy that penalty. Again in verse 12 he states, "Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you."
Now here is where I am really curious about what goes through Jonah's mind. He has committed himself to dying, and is thrown overboard, expecting to drown. Then he is swallowed by a great fish. He finds himself in a very large stomach. God kept him alive at that point; there would be no air or oxygen to breathe. The digestive juices that break down and dissolve food were kept inert. And the mechanical churning that stomachs do to break up food must have been kept quiet. We can surmise that Jonah did not pass out of the stomach into the intestinal tract, because he was vomited onto land, not passed in the other direction.
And during this dark time in the fish, surrounded by stomach lining, Jonah prayed to God and gave thanks. But there were several things he could not know at that point. He did not know where he was going. He did not know if he would ultimately survive; he may have presumed that God would not save him from drowning just to die in the fish. However to me, the most excruciating part of this ordeal is that he did not know how long he would be there. We know in retrospect that he was there for three days, but Jonah did not know that while he was in the fish.
Jonah would have had some difficulty in determining the passage of time; I doubt that the wristwatches back then were visible in the dark. He must have had some idea that time was passing, but no knowledge of how long his ordeal would last. Jonah must have known God was keeping him alive in the fish, but how much longer would this go on? Would he be in there days, weeks, months, or years?
For many of us, suffering is more bearable if we know its parameters. We ask, "How bad will it be?" and "What is the worst that could happen?" We also feel that we could endure almost anything if we knew the answer to the question, "How long will this last?" Having no end in sight makes it all seem so much more gloomy. We know that an all-powerful God could stop our suffering in an instant. It is not always so clear as to why He chooses not to, and what his purposes are in allowing it to continue. We do know that we will not suffer one more second that God has determined is necessary to accomplish those purposed. He does not forget to set His timer.
We are not given a timetable for our sufferings. We can learn from Jonah, with his many flaws and hardened heart, that God is due our thanks in seemingly impossible situations. God hears our cries at all times, whether in a brightly lit church or in the dark inside of a fish at the bottom of the sea. For the Christian, there is always a finite limit to how long we will suffer, for there each of us has a finite time on this earth before reaching eternal joy. Only those who have rejected Christ will face the possibility of eternal suffering. And as Christians, we know that "If we endure, we shall also reign with Him (II Timothy 2:12).
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