Here is my paraphrase of the story…God commands Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and tell them about God. Jonah flees and ignores God’s command and finds himself swallowed by a 🐳. In the midst of the 🐳 body, Jonah cries out to God. After 3 days and nights, God has the 🐳 spit him onto land. Fast forward to chapter 4 and Jonah is angry at God for not destroying the people, who changed their ways. Jonah tells God he just wants to die instead of live and goes to sit on a hill and observe. Meanwhile, because God is full of compassion, He has a plant grow to shade Jonah. The next day, God has a 🐛devour plant and Jonah is left without shade and overcome by discomfort. Again he cries out to God to just let him die.
Here’s the application: We too get consumed by the “whales” of life – addictions, success, relationships…like Jonah, it totally engulfs us. It isn’t until we get to the end of ourselves and realize that we can’t save ourselves; only God can save us, that we can be spit out/released from the 🐳 holding us. Just like Jonah we pray to God and then when God doesn’t answer our prayer the way we think, we get angry at God. However, just as He did for Jonah, He is covering us with the protection that we need even when we don’t realize it. We need to trust God and continually pray so that we are under His shade/protection and not in the belly of a 🐳!
Barren Womb Fertile Heart 