#DailyDevotion Sleeping In The Midst Of The Storm?
Jon. 4But the LORD sent a strong wind on the sea; a great storm rose; they thought the ship would be wrecked. 5The sailors were scared, and each of them cried to his god. They dumped the cargo into the sea to lighten their load. But Jonah had gone down into the inner hold of the ship and was lying there fast asleep.
It is not always evident the LORD sends disaster for a particular thing. What I mean is the fires we often see in California aren’t so disasterous because a particular person was being punished by God by these means as opposed to us humans being generally sinful and the LORD is calling all of us to repent when we see it. Or a tornado occurs and is being used by God to affect a certain person, as opposed to the LORD using these evils to call all of us to repentance. And as we look at Job, we should deduce that not everything bad happens to be because I had done something particularly bad. Job was as righteous as any of us can get being simultaneously saints and sinners. None of this is the case with Jonah. The LORD is after Jonah. This evil is coming because of Jonah’s disobedience.
So the LORD is sending this strong wind to get Jonah’s attention and to get him to repent. Unfortunately for the sailors and the boat, they get caught up in it. Mind you they are general sinners and not saints at all. However, they haven’t done anything wrong in particular other than taking Jonah on board. Like most people when stuff gets hairy, they call upon whatever god they had. Most Americans have an anonymous god who looks like a caricature of the Christian God. Drunkards have their porcelain god. Most people’s god in our day and place is more like a genie than the Christian God, Jesus Christ.
Having done their prayers, now they are off doing what they can. It doesn’t appear their gods are going to help. They are not working on the pagan principle, “God helps those who help themselves.” Not that it is particularly wrong to have prayed to the God of heaven, the earth and the sea to be about doing the next right thing, they weren’t doing that.
And what is Jonah doing? He is sleeping. He probably went to sleep before the weather was a real problem. He wasn’t particularly shirking his duty. He wasn’t a sailor. If you haven’t thought about Jesus sleeping in the stern of the boat during a great storm yet, wake up! The most crew of the apostles expected of Jesus was that He would help bail. I don’t think they were even expecting that of Jonah. The following verses will show what they expected of Jonah.
I don’t think Jonah was thinking he was doing something particularly sinful when he left Joppa and didn’t go to Nineveh. He, in his mind, probably thought He was being a good Israelite still. As far as he was concerned, he was keeping the commandments. He was living in the general will of God for all people. He was probably at ease in the general care of the LORD for His people. Jesus also rested trusting in His Father in heaven to take care of Him. If bad things happened, it’s just the normal course of events. God works all things for good for those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose. We also should not let disaster, particularly in our own lives unsettle us too much. We should rest on that promise Paul gives us in Romans 8. However, if we can see that the evils in our lives are directly related to our bad behavior, it is incumbent upon us to repent, repair the damage, and look to Christ for forgiveness.
Merciful God and Father, give us faith to trust in You in all circumstances, knowing all things come from Your fatherly hand for our good. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.