storm

And there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Jonah 1:4

Having been in my share of storms – personally, at home, in the workplace, and in church life –
I immediately connect with the storm Jonah faced. It has me pondering storms…

Some storms come because we are headed the wrong way, like Jonah; the storm intended as a corrective, to wake us from our sleep (“What meanest thou, O Sleeper?” – you can hardly improve on that as a question in such times) and cause us to examine our faulty course.

Other storms come to test our resolve or even to simply alter our course just a bit, like Paul’s storm in Acts 27 that detoured him to that little island of Malta for the rest of the winter.

Other storms come as an outright assault to take us under – like the storm on Galilee that Jesus got up and rebuked.

And some storms come because, well, we live in a place of many storms.

Jonah’s storm was clearly in the first category (can we call it a category one storm?) – divinely sent as a course interruption/correction for Jonah, personally. One thing I have always loved about the story of Jonah is how that, regardless of how insensitive and flawed he is in his response to God (whether in the first act of the story in his disobedience or in the second act in his obedience), God is at work in everything else around him. And so pagan sailors cry out to their gods for help and then throw every thing they can overboard. Rousing Jonah, they entreat the prophet’s prayers (what a wonderful role reversal!). And when everyone starts asking who might be to blame for the storm (isn’t it amazing that we always go there!), and the cast lots point to Jonah, he, of course, tells all. He offers the solution of throwing him overboard to stop the storm – and here’s the amazing thing: they refuse to do it! Businesses and churches in crisis will and often do readily throw shipmates overboard because they’ve deduced they’re to blame or just because someone has to go to lighten the load…you do what you gotta do (though families don’t normally throw their own overboard in crisis…not normally...though in biblical times, as we've seen, sometimes they did eat them). But these sailors row with might and main, desperate not to be reduced to that extreme.

But ultimately over the side Jonah goes as he yields to the storm and is willing to “go to hell” for the sake of the ship (the deep sea represented “hell” to the Jewish mindset – it’s why it’s a comfort in Revelation that “the sea is no more”). And “hell” (Hebrew sheol = the grave, the pit, the unseen place of the dead) is what he finds waiting for him in the belly of the fish for three days and nights.

I see some wonderful lessons from these pagan sailors on how to navigate the storms of life.

Let my first response in the storm be to cry out to God, rather than cursing, hiding below deck in denial, or beating up and blaming fellow ship mates.

Let me be willing to part with any thing. One of the bottom line lessons of every storm we encounter is the ultimate worthlessness of every thing. Every thing can go. In the case of Paul's journey, even the ship can go (and it did, on at least four different occasions). It’s a good day when the ship breaks up in the storm but all hands are saved.

Let me cling to every soul around me in the storm. When the normal reaction is ‘every man for himself,’ the pagan sailors stuck together and risked all for Jonah. What a shame if we do any less.

And taking a lesson from Jonah, let me yield myself to the waves with grace when I must – for my Papa is the owner of earth and sea. Or if I’m still standing on deck after the storm has subsided, let me, like those pagan sailors, take time to thank God – and sail on.