We are currently being blessed with a sermon series at GCC (see link at left or go to iTunes and type in Chad Doerr) on Jonah. As usual I have walked away from both sermons with plenty to chew on. Last night Mickey and I were discussing the sermon and I told him that I had been struck by one thought in particular... Jonah was very effectively removed from all distractions so that God could capture his attention. I mean, come on... how many distractions can there possibly be in the belly of a great fish?!
The only place he could focus his attention was on God, and the only thing he had to think about (other than the horrible smell!) was what God wanted him to do, and why he hadn't just done as he was told!!! Now, Jonah was a prophet, God spoke directly to him, and he STILL didn't comply. How much more do we, who have to kind of take a stab at what God is asking, block out his voice with our daily distractions? Often times, we not only fail to comply with God's requests, but we manage to effectively drown out the sound of his voice with TV, radio, computers, kids, phones... and the list goes on and on.
While Jonah didn't have those types of distractions, I am sure that he certainly had some way of placing God's call on the back burner....so in the the belly he went. No more distractions!!!
While I doubt that we will ever have a "big fish" moment in our lives, I think that it would do us all good to find some quiet time with God. We all need to lock out the distractions that might keep us from hearing his voice. Who knows how our lives might just be changed.
1 comment:
Love your comic strip!
The thing that struck me - the last line of Chapter 2 where Jonah is vomited onto dry land....can you imagine the projectile vomiting that had to happen to get him all the way to dry land??? Hopefully God had something there for a soft landing!!
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