Jonah was a prophet, and as such, God gives him a direct order: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.” (Jonah 1:2)
So of course, what does this great spokesman of Jehovah do?
But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. (Jonah 1:3)
Um…excuse me? What kind of prophet is this, exactly?
When you read through the prophets, you will hear them complain, argue, beg, and even try and strike bargains with God, but Jonah just turned tail and ran away! Is it just me, or does he not quite seem to get how this whole Omnipotent and Omnipresent thing works?
But God treats him like we sometimes treat our children… He waits… He lets him run, and watches as Jonah boards a ship carrying him far away from where God told him to go.
At this point I just have to wonder….did Jonah actually think he had succeeded? Here he is, sleeping on this ship heading away from Nineveh… was he thinking, “Whew! That was a close one – now God won’t know where I am and He won’t be able to warn Nineveh!”
Yeah, it didn’t really work out for him like that, did it? God waited until Jonah was asleep and then the party started… The storm God dropped on them was so devastating that the captain (i.e. someone who sails on rough seas for a living) was scared to death, sure that they would perish! That gives us a good clue as to just how severe this storm was...
So God laid the smack-down on the ship, they found out Jonah was to blame by casting lots (yeah, don’t believe in luck here), and the sailors eventually dumped him into the drink…. that’s when the famous fish came along and swallowed him like a college kid downs a goldfish (irony intended).
People sometimes use this as a reason they think the bible is just ‘fairy tales’. As if the God that created the universe and everything in it would be unable to keep some dude alive in a big fish for 3 days… wow, really?
“Hey, I just created a billion galaxies and filled a planet full of crazy living creatures… but don’t ask me to do anything tricky!”
Anyway, the point I’m failing miserably to get to here is that even a prophet of God Almighty had doubts – so when we doubt, we are really being this thing called human - and remember who made us humans? Yeah, I guarantee you that God can handle our doubts.
Don’t feel bad for questioning Him – I think He likes it when people question things. How else will we learn and get beyond the doubts, unless we ask honest questions, and even argue and disagree… He’s plenty big enough to handle it!