Part 2 of this series on where Jonah comes in towelling himself off.
You won't believe it! The last time I was speaking to you I told you how I ended up doing the doggy paddle in the middle of the Mediterranean. God had asked me to go to Nineveh and I just happened to take a wrong turning, and ended up heading in the opposite direction... In a boat headed for Tarshish. But God soon caught up with me and whipped up a storm just to grab my attention, and before I knew it the sailors had grabbed me and threw me over the side to keep God quiet. So there I was... Fishfood... Literally, as it happened.
Have you ever had the misfortune of listening to fishermen telling you tales of the one that got away? It was this big, they tell you... When you know fine rightly it was this big. Well I've got a story that will top any of their's... Not so much the one that got away as the one that got me... How big was it? It was that big! Big enough to swallow me in one gulp, and I'm quite a mouthful.
"You were swallowed by a fish..." you say. "Do you think I'm going to swallow that!" Well, I don't care... I know that it happened and that's good enough for me. If I hadn't been swallowed by that fish I would have drowned. When the sailors threw me into the sea I called on the Lord to save me, in between gulping down big mouthfuls of seawater. But although I prayed to God, I didn't expect him to hear my prayer. Why should he listen to me when I hadn't listened to him? I'd got what I deserved. But he did save me. Although, I'll admit, it was a strange salvation.
But strange salvation or not, all that I could do was to sing a song of praise to the Lord from the belly of that fish. Not too many people have done that, I would think. I didn't know, I didn't care what lay ahead, I just praised God...
But the next thing I knew the fish was being sick; it must have been something it had eaten... And it vomited me up on the beach. Honest.
Well, not everyone gets a second chance like that, so I'd better not make the same mistake again. So does anyone know which way it is to Nineveh?
© David A. Campton 2001
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