Drowning in the Deep End

As far as I know, I've only come close to drowning one time. It was in a small swimming pool at a campground, and I was less than five feet from the nearest cement edge. 

Our family had gone to Paradise Valley Campground near Grandfather Mountain outside of my hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. We were camping that week with my extended family, and of course -- when you're a water-loving kid -- the pool is always the main attraction anywhere you go. 

So, on the afternoon that this happened, I was swimming in a nearly empty pool. I can't remember which members of my family had come with me, but I remember that any adults who accompanied me were not in the pool, but sitting in one of the chairs that lined the patio area. 

I was not an incompetent swimmer, but neither was I a pro. I could bob along for a while through the deep end, but I lacked the confidence it took to cut through the water like a fish. As I surfaced from a jump off the diving board, I happened to see a large activity bus pull into the campground's parking lot, and only a few minutes later, the pool was swarming with kids.

I'm sure there's some sort of ratio for how many people are supposed to swim in a certain amount of square inches of water. I have no idea what that ratio is supposed to be, but whatever it is, it was broken. If you've ever seen stocked ponds packed with koi fish... this is what it looked like. The infiltration of new swimmers into this pool happened so quickly (think: "CANNONBALL!!" followed by a massive tidal wave as forty or fifty enthusiastic campers jumped into the small pool), that I had no chance to get to the side or to the shallow end, either one.

So I treaded water. I was good at treading water; it didn't bother me. I've always been a bit of a cork when it comes to floating. 

But after a while, my arms and legs started to flag, and there was still no break in the steady stream of swimmers all around me. I couldn't reach the wall. The shouting and excited squealing of kids made it impossible to be heard as I started to panic. I glanced at my grownup (I still can't remember who it was that was there with me), but they couldn't see my distress. I looked like I was having fun.

My arms cramped, my legs cramped. I started to go down. I took a deep lungful of air and let myself sink as I thought: I'll just rest at the bottom of the pool for a bit until the cramps go away.

And then, horrifically, as I looked up at the surface from the bottom of the deep end, the koi crowd -- who swam all around me even under the water -- also started swimming over top of my little window of salvation on the surface, and I suddenly realized, I was going to be trapped under the water.

Strength flooded my cramped muscles. My brain's amygdala sent a bolt of cortisol through it, hijacking the normal, thoughtful messenger process that flows through the communication dispatch hub in the thalamus. Fellow nerds: unite with me here! Brain science is fascinating, and a phenomenal example of the amazing complexity of our Creator!

With a jolt of new energy, I came up again, plowing my head into someone's stomach, lurching frantically against bodies as I splashed my way to the edge. When you're about to drown, you stop being polite and shy. 

The cement side came into grasping distance, and I clung to it, crying, shaking, gasping for breath. The thing was: I was crying with a pool-wet face and gasping in panic after an exerting swim, so nobody had any clue that I had come so close to drowning. But I was safe. I had come from near death to a realization of what I loved about life in the space of about three eternal seconds. 

So at the end of Jonah 1 yesterday, he's drowning. The sailors toss him overboard, because it's Jonah's fault that the ship he's on is getting ready to sink. He's disobeyed the Lord, he's running away. The Lord sends a terrific storm that is threatening the life of every sailor aboard the vessel, and Jonah finally has to face what he's done. I can't imagine what it took for him to say: "Pick me up and throw me into the sea and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you."

Yesterday, I talked about how Jonah waffles from one extreme to another. Today, I'm going to continue that theme with a different metaphor. Jonah is a seesaw. I'll get to that in a second.

Yesterday, the Lord prepared a big fish (some believe it was a Sperm Whale, others a Great White Shark) to swallow him whole and to carry him to shore, but Jonah doesn't necessarily know that. He thinks he's going to drown. He allows himself to be tossed overboard into what is almost certainly a watery grave. I looked up some Biblical research into this story, and what I found was fascinating for nerds. I recommend reading this account of Jonah's fishy experience. It gave me all sorts of cool perspective, and reminded me that Jonah did not comfortably curl up to sleep and pray for three days until he reached land.

Jonah 2 is the prayer the runaway prophet prays from inside the fish. This account is poetry, and that may turn some of you off right away, but let me highlight a couple of really interesting things I found in it:

1.) Here's the beginning of the seesaw effect. Jonah starts out calling from the depths of Sheol -- he calls it the grave, but the Hebrew word used here means -- afterlife. If you are familiar with Greek mythology, you might think of the world of Hades, guarded by the Cerberus, where the souls of the dead wander around in a half-existent, ghostlike state. Some believe that Jonah literally died within the fish's stomach and was miraculously resurrected -- and I don't discount that; there have been death-to-life experiences and testimonies even today. But given the hyperbolic language of Jonah's prayer, I think it's likely that by "grave," he was -- as my favorite literary character Anne Shirley puts it -- "in the depths of despair." 

Jonah cries out: "In my distress, I called to the Lord, and He answered me. From the depths of the grave (Sheol), I called for help, and You listened to my cry" (Jonah 2:2). He's echoing David in Psalm 69, where he writes: "Save me, oh God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters, the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God" (Psalm 69:1-3).

2.) The seesaw tilts to the central axis as Jonah begins to recognize and appreciate the lesson God is teaching him here. "You hurled me (active verb: God disciplines Jonah, not the storm, not the fish, not the sailors who tossed him overboard) into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me" (Jonah 2:3).

That last phrase caught my attention; I recognized it from one of my favorite Psalms: "Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me" (Psalm 42:7). Admittedly, my attraction to this verse comes from the flowing beauty of the word choice and has little to do with any more profound meaning. So I dove a little deeper (heh) into studying this verse. 

Jump with me back a couple of pages to Psalm 36:8: "They feast on the abundance of Your house; You give them drink from Your river of delights." 

Y'all, listen to this; I thought this was really cool. Psalm 42:7 is often thought to refer to the Jordan River that flows down from the heights of Mount Hermon. But what is more likely is that the Scripture, rather than giving out only one application, actually gives out two here (par for the course. The Scripture is the best multi-applicated book ever). 

Second application of this Scripture: Deep (God's river) calls to deep (earthly river) in the roar of Your waterfalls." My footnotes say this: "This is a literary allusion to the 'waterfalls' by which the waters from God's storehouse of water above -- the 'deep' above -- pour down into the streams and rivers that empty into the seas -- the 'deep' below. It pictures the great distress the author suffers, and the imagery is continued in the following reference to God's 'waves and breakers' sweeping over him."

Did I lose you there? I'll try to simplify: "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the Holy Place where the Most High dwells" (Psalm 46:4). The River of Life, flowing through heaven, gives us eternal life here on earth. That living water, referred to by Christ Himself when He speaks with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, crashes over us in our need, our eternal need for Him. For Jesus.

Further simplification: Jonah finds himself at the excruciating and blissful meeting place between his need (earthly, drowning waters) and his salvation (living water, heavenly water, the river that makes glad the city of God).

Here's what I mean, as concisely as I can write it: The center of the seesaw is between the earthly water and the heavenly water, between the water that drowns and the water that gives life. Isn't that amazing!!!?

3.) And when Jonah finds himself there, when he realizes his need and his salvation, and when he connects the two together, he metaphorically surfaces from the depths of his despair. "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord."

The seesaw tilts the other way. Jonah finds himself leaning into salvation and life instead of death and despair. He offers the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving from his place of need. He sees that there's nothing left that he can do. He's at the end of his rope, he's surrounded by a whale's first stomach, the one that is supposed to crush its food, but Jonah is too large and too... tasteless... to trigger the crushing muscles (I'm telling you, go read that link up-post). There's no hope except what God offers him. 

His salvation is entirely dependent on the Lord -- from Whom he is running -- and it takes reaching that point of absolute nakedness, absolute necessity, absolute release of control -- to find his way back to life.

I gave up swimming at the bottom of that pool. I sank to the bottom and thought: I can't do this anymore. I can't make my muscles move anymore. It took that stripped down, complete ending feeling to realize that God was going to have to swim for me.

There's so much more I could say about this, but I won't. I know I've felt like I'm drowning, especially this past year. I know many of you feel this, too. The belly of that fish isn't very comfortable. It's tight, it's smothering. You can't breathe very well, and you don't know if it will ever end. That sea is deep, and the currents press down hard.

I mean, "even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength! They will mount up with wings like eagles! They will run and not grow weary! They will walk and not be faint" (Isaiah 40:30-31).

Y'all, let the Lord take you from the depths... to the air. Stop swimming with the fish, start soaring with the eagles. "Do you not know, have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth! He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding, no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak!" (Isaiah 40:28-29).

Let Him swim for you! He absolutely can!