Jonah & the Big Fish

Jonah and the Big Fish
Watercolour
9" x 12"
40 minutes

I have been going through a particularly busy and difficult period at work lately, and regretfully have not put up any new posts in awhile. This watercolor picture of Jonah and the Big Fish, an artistic impression of an image I found online, was a painting that I did a few weeks back, and it speaks to me in particular because I struggle with the same issues as Jonah - difficulties in ministry, obedience, lack of compassion, self-righteousness and constant anger.

The full story extracted from the book of Jonah (NIV) provides as follows:

"1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: ² “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

³ But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa,where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

⁴ Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. ⁵ All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.

But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. ⁶ The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”

⁷ Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. ⁸ So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”

⁹ He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

¹⁰ This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)

¹¹ The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”

¹² “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”

¹³ Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. ¹⁴ Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” ¹⁵ Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. ¹⁶ At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.

Jonah’s Prayer

¹⁷ Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

2 

¹ From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. ² He said:

“In my distress I called to the Lord,
    and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
    and you listened to my cry.
³ You hurled me into the depths,
    into the very heart of the seas,
    and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
    swept over me.
⁴ I said, ‘I have been banished
    from your sight;
yet I will look again
    toward your holy temple.’
⁵ The engulfing waters threatened me,
    the deep surrounded me;
    seaweed was wrapped around my head.
⁶ To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
    the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, Lord my God,
    brought my life up from the pit.

⁷ “When my life was ebbing away,
    I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
    to your holy temple.

⁸ “Those who cling to worthless idols
    turn away from God’s love for them.
⁹ But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
    will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
    I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”

¹⁰ And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.'

Jonah Goes to Nineveh

3 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: ² “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”

³ Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. ⁴ Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” ⁵ The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

⁶ When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. ⁷ This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:

“By the decree of the king and his nobles:

Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. ⁸ But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone callurgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. ⁹ Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

¹⁰ When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

Jonah’s Anger at the Lord’s Compassion

4 But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. ² He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. ³ Now,Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

⁴ But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

⁵ Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. ⁶ Then theLord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. ⁷ But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. ⁸ When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

⁹ But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

¹⁰ But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹ And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

My personal reflections on the above account are as follows:

1. Ministering for God's kingdom. As Christians, we are called to minister to both Christians and non-Christians through sharing the gospel, loving correction and being the salt and light of this fallen world. For the most part, once I had converted, I did not expect to find that ministering to people could be hindered by personal bias or issues. Oftentimes, sharing the gospel came easily to me. However, like Jonah, through time, I found that I had multiple personal barriers that hindered my ministry. Jonah did not want to preach on repentence to evil people because he thought them to be unworthy of God's mercy. I, too, gradually realized that I had my own barriers. I am not a naturally warm person - I often need (much) time to warm up to people and a healthy amount of personal space and consequentially I find it hard to reach out to people who intrude my personal space, who are socially exhausting, whom I have no chemistry with, whom I feel are unkind or incompetent or who simply rub me off the wrong way (even if I know that this is through no fault of their own). I used to justify my general hostility/struggles, believing that maybe my natural struggles was an indication that God did not intend to use me to reach out to these people. But Jonah's account shows that despite internal biases, God may still want us to continue to fight these biases, so that we may reach out to these people and draw them to His kingdom. Hence, we should obediently and prayerfully seek to overcome our internal biases in our ministry so that we can work to achieve God's ultimate glory and purposes.
2. Obedience to God. Often times, we are willful disobedient to God's commands because there are things that we choose to hold on to and refuse to submit to God's  greater design. When we disobey, it shows a lack of faith in God and a desire for our (often selfish) wills and plans to prevail over His. For example, God tells us not to hoard money; often, we refuse to give generously and continue to hoard because we refuse to believe that God has better plans for our money than for it to sit comfortably in our bank accounts for our (sometimes frivolous and meaningless) consumption. Or God tells us to submit to authority; we refuse because we think our ideas and plans are so much better and we deserve more than to have to submit to another (perhaps undeserving) person. God told Jonah to preach in Nineveh - Jonah did not want to do so because he wanted to see them punished for their misdeeds. In all of these instances, we have an idea of what we, in our limited human understanding and in all our sinfulness, want to achieve, sometimes in contradiction to God's greater purposes. We find ways to justify what we want or what we think is right. And that's where the danger lies. Because our plans will never be comparable to the greater plans and designs of the all-knowing, ever-loving and ever-wise God. No doubt, we will continue to struggle in our quest to be obedient to God, but in this struggle, we should always prayerfully fight our sinful nature to submit to Him and be fully obedient. In any event, disobedience is futile because God is sovereign. Jonah disobeyed God, but God ultimately disciplined and brought him to humble obedience (a process  which could have been avoided if Jonah had been obedient from the start).
3. Repentance and God's Grace and Compassion. God extended both grace and compassion to Jonah (who had disobeyed His instructions) and the people of Nineveh (who had disobeyed His commands). Both were sinful. But both had repented - and the repentant heart of a sinner with faith in the Lord is pleasing to His eyes. Jonah had repented by confessing to his sins on the boat, taking responsibility and being thrown aboard, praying humbly to God for salvation and thereafter obeying God's command to preach in Nineveh. The people of Nineveh had repented by humbly clothing themselves in sackcloth and renouncing their evil ways. However, in being angry at God's compassion to Nineveh, Jonah had clearly misunderstood the basis of God's grace - he had erroneously thought that part of this should be based on conduct and works. But in actuality, since the fall of Adam and Eve, all Men are fallen and need God's grace; none are, on their own, worthy of any salvation. As Luke 5:31-32 (NIV) states: "
   Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
   I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
4. Comfort vs Love. God had used the plant and Jonah's anger in relation thereto to gently illustrate clearly how Jonah valued his comfort (from a plant) more greatly than the lives of many. How can this be? Yet sometimes we find ourselves unknowingly ensnared in the same trap. I remember how I was once very exhausted and could not find a taxi for more than half an hour; in my angst tears came to my eyes and I was not pleased with God at all. That was really spoilt of me, and as I was reflecting on this passage, I realized that I am often more preoccupied and emotional about my own personal comfort than caring about doing God's work or being compassionate about the trials of God's people. For all of my self-righteousness at times, I, like Jonah, have a very skewed perspective of what is important and pleasing to God, and constantly get unduly worked up over the wrong things.

May we draw wisdom from Jonah's experience and continually walk forward in our relationship with God!