Thoughts in Jonah

I thought I would share with all of you my various journaled thoughts on Jonah:

Jonah went to distract himself from God. He wasn't going to Tarshish to sacrifice babies or rape and pillage the land, he was just going to do something other than what God wanted.

"Why have you done this?" Why would you run from the God who made the sea and the dry land? People talk of being rational and reasonable - what is more reasonable than doing the will of God? He made everything. He probably knows how to take care of it.

I want to know the awe that the sailors felt. Don't let me lose sight of Your Awesomeness through familiarity.

"Now the Lord had prepared a great fish." He was ready and waiting for Jonah. But He didn't speak to the fish until Jonah said his prayer. God gave the opportunity but waited for repentance to take action.

"They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy." - Jonah's proverb to himself in the midst of his prayer. When you think you can do your own thing because of how great you are, you are actively rejecting God.

We undervalue people. Plants and pets are cool because they do what we want them to, but people annoy and infuriate us. We notice the person that is putting himself in our way, ignore those that don't, and show special favor to those like us that want the same things as us. While I don't think we necessarily need to go out of our way to find people that irritate us, we do need to love. We need to love more than we do. Because God loves more than we do.