Life Lessons From Jonah

As much as I had appreciated staying with my friend and the restorative properties of the ranch, going home had its own appeal. When I had planned this excursion three months ago, it had been with the almost desperate need to run away. To get away. To be anywhere except where so many forms of sadness, difficulty and trauma had taken place. Traveling can give one the sense of no attachments, no commitments. Just the open road. A place where one day leads to the next, and life is simply a matter of uncomplicated decisions - what to eat, where to drive, who to visit, when to stop. 

Ironically, uncomplicated is not the word I would use for what we encountered on the road. I believe that in the last two months we have crossed more bridges, experienced more heartache, and dealt with more difficulties than is typical of a normal eight week excursion. I strongly feel God allowed me to experience all of this for a reason. A wise friend shared her thoughts with me, and it confirms what I already know. My almighty, all-loving, all-wise God used the road to show me that I can’t run from Him. At the beginning of my journey I would have argued you up and down and retorted that I never was running from Him, and honestly, I didn’t feel that I was! I was escaping the complications of my world. 

But if you consider that God is the one that has allowed me to walk the paths - oh, doesn’t that sound simplistic! How about a better visual of what it looks like in my mind’s eye! God has allowed me to stumble along cactus-lined desert roads crawling with scorpions and scrabble through ravines strewn with sharp boulders - Then I suppose if I must admit it, perhaps I was running from Him. Not just from my life. 

Over this last year I have cried, pondered, prayed, analyzed, and tried to make sense of it all. Sometimes you just can’t figure things out, and you can ask, “Why did it happen?” “What should I have done differently?” but at the end things happen that God in his Almighty power allows. 

This year has been akin to a refining fire. I can say that I am still in the kiln. And it’s hot. Very, very hot. Uncomfortably so. The dross is being burned away, and maybe one day, there will be more gold, and less of the impure qualities that the goldsmith burns away when purifying the metal.  

Though the fire has been scorching, I have never been alone. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in the fiery furnace, God was with them. When Daniel was in the lion’s den, God closed the lion’s mouth. When our family went through our trials, God was with us. All the way. All the time. 

Faith is my spiritual gift. I so love God and believe in miracles, and I have so much faith that He can make things happen. But what about trust? That is an area that I have to increase in, but for something to develop it needs to be tried. I believe that perhaps this year has been for that purpose, but through it all God never let me down. I felt His presence on a daily basis. A dear lady prayed last year that we would feel His presence. And we did. Oh, my, did we. In tangible ways. That increased my trust. I was in the figurative lion’s mouth, but God was with me. 

So why would I take to the road? Because I was tired of stuff. Well, God has a way of helping us to see clearly! There will always be garbage and clutter in our lives. If our travels had been a serene, successful road-trip as I had envisioned, I might have forgotten my need for Him. I might have seen that running away was the answer for difficult times, instead of allowing myself to walk through the fire with God at my right hand as he poured cooling water on my scorching feet, until I emerged triumphant on the other side. Sometimes difficulties are there to help us learn to lean on Him. Sometimes they happen because of the gift He gave man: free will. No matter if they occur because of His will or man’s will, Jesus will be with us through it all. 

Coming home was the best thing I could do. Life will continue to throw its curves, but God has called me to certain responsibilities, and I can choose to attend to them with my whole heart with the Lord at my side, or I can be like Jonah, who ran to Tarshish rather than minister to the wicked Ninevites as God had instructed him. 

Me thinks it might have been easier if Jonah had chosen to follow the Lord’s orders initially! Instead, he ended up in a violent storm in the middle of the ocean, cast overboard by his shipmates, and eventually, stewing in the belly of an enormous fish!  I am sure at first, he like me, analyzed why it had all happened, and perhaps even justified his actions. But in the end, it was his praising of the Lord in the midst of the trials that God had allowed to overtake him, and his recognition that God had been with him and carried him through it all, and his prayerful words of encouragement to others to trust in God, as God is the Lord of salvation, that caused him to be thrown from the fish’s belly up onto the shore. With a faithfulness and boldness of spirit, Jonah now delivered his message to Ninevah, as he was convicted that that no matter how difficult the task he must trust and obey the Lord.

Like Jonah, I cannot run from the call God has on my life. Some responsibilities are more difficult than others, and I might wonder if I am properly equipped for them, and sometimes even question ‘Did God choose the wrong person?’, but with the Lord there are no mistakes. He knows what He is doing. 

It is time for me to lean into Him and stop doing things on my own strength. Yes, I am the Queen of Independence, and in many ways I claimed that title by necessity, not choice, but that needs to change. However, the biggest alteration I need to make in coming home is embracing what He has gifted me with. Yes, even the trials are gifts. Why? Because they make us grow. They change us. And if we let Him He will turn us from ugly lumps of shapeless clay into exquisite pieces of pottery. 

Job 23:10  But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold. 

Isaiah 64:8 Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.