Jonah is not about a fish

by Fredrick Van Tatenhove, professor 1975-2002

 

 

Jonah is not about a fish. That thought came to me early one morning. Now I cannot explain why. I had not been reading Jonah. But there it was and I was awake. I got up turned to the book of Jonah and read it in less than 6 minutes.

 

A few days later as I was walking down the fairway of the first hole with my Jewish friend, I causally told him of my morning experience with Jonah. He immediately stopped walking, turned to me and said, “Fred, Jonah is maybe the most important book in the Bible. It’s about God’s unending love for whoever will come to him.” Well I got it! Jonah wasn’t included in the Old Testament to teach us something about whales.

 

For the next week I studied Jonah. I found a lot of my experience in his story. He learned that he could not run from God. Would not a prophet of God known that? There is a poem often cited by evangelists in the early 1900s – “The Hound of Heaven.” One portion includes these words:

I fled him down the nights and down the days:
I fled him down the arches of the years;
I fled him—and in the midst of tears I hid from him…”

 

So Jonah flees to Tarshish. Some suggest that is about as far away he could get from Nineveh. Maybe you can identify with Jonah, at least sometime in your spiritual journey. I can. Took me six years to yield to what I sensed as a 12 year old was God’s call to ministry and not medicine. Jonah had to end up on a beach to learn he could not run from God’s call to go to Nineveh. I had to end up at an altar as an 18 year old in a church in El Monte, CA.

 

I came to see something else in Jonah’s life; he only heard what he wanted to hear. He didn’t want to hear that God would offer redemption to a people who were his enemy. All he wanted to hear was that God was going to destroy this wicked and evil nation. How often have I heard someone say to me, “Did you hear me? That is not what is said.” It made me reflect upon the fact that “selective hearing” can take place in my journey with God. I am convinced that when that happens, I am missing the best God has for me.

 

I think my friend Julius is right. Jonah is about the LOVE OF GOD THAT WILL NOT LET YOU GO! I experience a lot of comfort in knowing that.