Whale of a Tale

 

This week we have gazed at starry nights with Abraham and felt the warmth of campfires with Moses that can change our life.  Today we find ourselves in the belly of the whale (or really a big fish) with Jonah.  Creation here has taken center stage.  I love how God swallows Jonah and then spits him out in the sand through this fish.  I love the image of Jonah in that stomach with the undigested bits of kelp and minnows and seaweed ~ so sorry if you are reading this while eating breakfast and just lost your appetite.  I picture Jonah there and suddenly my life doesn’t seem all that bad after all.  This story reminds me that not all habitats are hospitable, not all gardens are “Eden”. 

 

Wait, what environments right now seem inhabitable to you?  Could be at work, committees, volunteers, your neighborhood, family reunions coming up, or watching the waters for an approaching hurricane.  Where is Creation not just filling you with awe but with some dread, this could be outside or in the comfort of air-conditioned setting where you find yourself.

 

Creation is not just beautiful, there is danger in Creation.  Our ancestors knew this.  One of the reasons we have a fight, flight, freeze, and flock part of our brain was our ancestors needed to remember the smells, sounds, sights, and locations of the tigers who threatened them.  One of our evolutionary adaptations was to develop a sense about where danger lurked and lived.  The ability to feel the change in air pressure or read the clouds.  Today, it is not necessarily lions or tigers or bears ~ oh my ~ that causes our fear, too often today we fear the other.  Which is exactly what Jonah was fleeing ~ the other.  Jonah was fleeing from the Ninevites, those people who voted that way and believed that idea and dared to breathe the same air as he did.  How in the world could God ever care for people like that? 

 

Jonah shows us what happens when our cynicism and clinging to our own correctness leads to scales in our eyes.  Jonah preaches and teaches loving our enemies before Christ said those words.  Jonah confronts us with the hard truth of loving people we don’t like.  This is not easy, but it is a truth every person reading this knows deep in your heart.  We have people we want to love but seem to have the nuclear code to cause our hearts to race and anger to flood our face.  Perhaps I would rather be fish food than love that person today.

 

I invite you to consider, who are you running away from today?  Might be a co-worker, family member, friend who just posted that conspiracy theory on social.  Is there a place where you’d rather spend three days in the belly of a fish than three hours with that person?  What does it mean to you that God calls us to love when we’d rather hate?  Hold these questions with an openness that stirs our spirit to what God is up to in our lives these days.  Amen.