January, 2021, Newsletter Column: Jonah’s Prayer

Church newsletter pastoral column for St. Peter Lutheran Church, Greene, Iowa, for January, 2021. 

Jonah’s Prayer

“Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish.”
– Jonah 2:1

One of the hardest times faced by any character in Scripture has to be the prophet Jonah’s three days in the belly of the whale. You know the story, right? God calls Jonah to go preach to the people of Nineveh, but instead, Jonah flees, boarding a ship sailing to Tarshish, a city in the exact opposite direction from Nineveh! God sends a storm to stop the ship, Jonah gets thrown overboard, and a giant fish swallows him up. (If Jonah’s story doesn’t sound familiar, or if it’s been a while since you’ve heard about Jonah, go listen to my sermons from January 17 & January 24!)

After being swallowed, Jonah spends three days and three nights inside the belly of the fish. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out this must have been a pretty low point in Jonah’s life. Sitting there in the darkness, he must have felt terrible (and imagine the stench!). He’d forsaken his duty as a prophet and run away from God’s call, and now he’s lost everything. Jonah’s future looks grim: His options appear to be being digested, dying of starvation, or drowning. So, he prays to God. The book of Jonah is a brief four chapters, and the second chapter consists entirely of Jonah’s subaqueous prayer.

Jonah’s prayer begins, “I called out to the Lord in my distress, and he answered me. From the belly of the underworld I cried out for help; you have heard my voice.” He’s looking back to the previous low point of his life, when he was tossed off of his ship into the sea. When he should have drowned, God sent a miraculous giant fish to rescue him. Now, remembering how God saved him before gives him strength to persevere and hope to again ask God for another miracle.

He continues in verse four, “I have been driven away from your sight. Will I ever again look on your holy temple?” As I write this, the church council has voted to resume in-person worship, but if the two-week positivity rate in Butler County exceeds 15%, we will once again be worshiping online. Even when we able to gather in-person, many people will not feel safe coming for a while. So this year especially, perhaps you can relate to Jonah’s feeling of being exiled from God’s house.

The good news, of course, is that for us as Christians, the church is not a building, but a community, and we have the promise that through the Holy Spirit, Jesus dwells within each of us. But if there are times when you do feel cut off from the church or even from God, you’re in good company. And remember, even Jonah’s prayer receives an answer.

Jonah’s prayer concludes with these lines: “When my endurance was weakening, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you, to your holy temple…deliverance belongs to the Lord!” Jonah’s prayer ends in faith, and God does deliver him, causing the fish to vomit him up onto the dry land. He goes on to follow God’s call to Nineveh, where God works another miracle that surprises even Jonah.

My prayer for you this month is that you can follow Jonah’s example, even without the involvement of a giant fish. In times of fear and desperation, turn to God. God is never too far away to hear you. God answers even prayers from inside the belly of a whale!

In Christ,
-Pastor Daniel Flucke