Amnesiac Waffles and the 24/7 Mirror

A couple of miles behind our house is a well-known hiking trail. A few years ago, a fairly wide riverbed used to run right along that trail for approximately a quarter of a mile, so that as hikers pushed along the watery pathway, the challenge was to step from stone to stone to stone until they could hit firm ground again. Often the stones shifted when weight was placed on them, so when my husband and I navigated that streambed with our young children in tow -- a four-year-old, a toddling two-year-old, and me wearing the baby in a baby carrier -- it got really dicey. 

My husband would stand on one of the solid rocks that didn't shift, and he'd grasp the hands of the next person following, helping them past the shifting rocks. Once I got past him, I'd find the next solid rock, and repeat the process. The two of us laddered the same process clear up the stream bed to solid ground.

Not too long ago, someone clogged up the streambed on one side, so the ascent up that hiking path is way less exciting now, but certainly... drier, and with less risk of falling into a rushing streambed.

Yesterday, my son asked me: "Mommy, has God told you what book you're going to study now that you're done with John?"

"No," I told him. "I'll pray about it for a few days."

"While you're waiting for God to tell you, I have a suggestion." He actually had two suggestions: "Do Jonah or Joshua."

So, leaving behind the book of John (I loved studying that book!), I'm turning now to Jonah. It'll be a short journey; there are only four chapters. 

So, in Jonah 1, we get to meet the Hebrew prophet. In the first sentence, Jonah gets his commission from the Lord: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me."

For a similar word from the Lord, see Genesis 18:20-21 where the Lord says: "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me."

Considering what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah... the people of Nineveh should sit up and take notice. God's not playing games here; He's not joking around: "Now, now, y'all straighten up. I told you to stop that..."

He commissions Jonah, His prophet, with the responsibility to go tell the people of Nineveh to shape up or He'll ship them out.

However, Jonah, instead of doubling down on the Lord's instructions, instead of practicing instant obedience, turns 180 degrees and hightails it as far as he can go from the place he's supposed to be. "Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord" (Jonah 1:3).

The map in my Bible made me chuckle this morning. I don't think I realized where Tarshish was in relation to Nineveh. Though its location isn't certain, my footnotes tell me that this is likely the city of Tartessus in southwest Spain, near Gibraltar -- which is clear across the sea and what seemed like the end of the world -- from Nineveh.

When Jonah runs away, he doesn't trot. He puts his head down and sprints.

Y'all know the story. He pays his passenger's fare, the ship sets off, and a storm comes up. The sailors are terrified. They're tossing cargo overboard to lighten the ship. They're each crying out to their own god, hoping that they make a dent in whatever powerful deity has sent this storm on them.

Jonah, meanwhile, the one who purportedly follows the only actual Deity, is snoring soundly below deck. 

The captain is at his wits' end. He's done everything he knows to do to keep the boat upright and above the water's surface. All his sailors have pled with their gods to save them. Jonah is the only one left who hasn't. Maybe that's the key.

The captain shakes Jonah awake. "How can you sleep?" he demands. "Get up and call on your God. Maybe He will take notice of us, and we will not perish!"

So Jonah gets up, and he gathers together with the sailors, while they pull out their dice. "Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity." 

Jonah watches as the lots fall to him, and all the sailor turn around and stare at him. "Tell us," they demand, "who is responsible for making all this trouble for us?" They put him through the inquisition. "What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?"

I want to say that Jonah has a transformational change here, that he turns back 180 degrees and never makes another mistake or willful and intentional departure from the Lord's instructions again... but I can't. He has a momentary return to his foundational beliefs. He says: "I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land" (Jonah 1:9).

The sailors are terrified. Jonah has made a claim to worship a God who is above their gods. Plus, add to this to the pot: Jonah has freely admitted that he is running away from the Lord: "They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so" (Jonah 1:10).

What to do, oh, what to do? Jonah offers the obvious (and somewhat drastic) solution: "Pick me up and throw me into the sea," he replies, "and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you."

The sailors, bless them, aren't quite so ready to give up -- the same fear they experience as a result of the powerful God Who has sent the storm turns into a fear that judgment will come on them if they drown an innocent man.

So they try to row back to land. The Hebrew word means "to dig," with great effort. They try really, really hard to save this man... but God will not be mocked, nor run away from, and the storm grows even wilder.

Finally, they have to admit defeat. "They took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm."

God wasn't done with His servant yet. He "provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights" (Jonah 1:17).

This story is as familiar to me as breathing; I've heard it told by my Sunday School teachers from as far back as I can recall. I remember seeing the flannelgraphs of Jonah and the massive fish, and Jonah on his knees in the comfortably large stomach chamber of the fish as he prays for the Lord's deliverance.

It's all very pristine. There are no tight quarters, no digestive juices. Nobody mentions claustrophobia. I mean, looking at it now, I wonder how long Jonah suffered PTSD from this event. How many nightmares did he experience for the rest of his life after being stuck immovably, hardly able to breathe, not knowing how long it would take for him to die?

Shudder!

The thing that really stands out to me here is this: I didn't see a picture of a repentant prophet in chapter one of Jonah. I see a waffle. I see a branch waving in the wind, tossed around with the slightest breeze. Jonah runs away, Jonah declares the God he serves. Jonah gets tossed overboard. Coming up, Jonah pitches a temper tantrum again about doing what God has asked him to do. Honestly... Jonah reminds me of the version of myself that I don't like to see -- a sand-shifter. A person who can't decide what they think.

James 1:22-25 says: "Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it -- he will be blessed in what he does."

Jonah has found himself in a mirror -- with amnesia. He folds up his faith in his briefcase, and walks one way, and then when his faith bursts out of the briefcase and reminds him of what he's supposed to do, he turns and walks the other. The entire book of Jonah is this waffle, pockmarked with the landmines that result from the attacks he himself has made against his own faith.

He's forgotten what he looks like.

Psalm 1 is my theme chapter I chose for this year, and the Lord has rooted it deeply in my heart: "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers" (Psalm 1:1-3).

I want my roots to run deep. I want my mirror to reflect smooth stability, fierceness, determination, and faithfulness. I don't want to be an amnesiac waffle.

I know my tendency is sometimes the same as Jonah's. I turn around and run in the opposite direction to the ends of the earth, anywhere that I can hide from God.

Clue: You can't hide from God. 

The Scriptures are the mirror, and His Word is our reflection. If we don't hold up that reflection to our hearts, how are we supposed to know what we look like? 

Lord, may we dig our roots deep. May our "delight be in the law of the Lord." May we meditate on it -- day and night. Like a tree planted by streams of water, may we be steady, faithful. The rocks in the middle of the stream can -- and will -- shift. May we be rooted and secure, a helper to others who travel the same path.

"Even at night, my heart instructs me" (Psalm 16:7). Thank you, Lord, for Your 24/7 mirror.