Article August 6, 2001 Issue

There's a whale waiting

Help for modern-day Jonahs

By Jeffrey Hildner

Have you ever felt you were drowning in a problem? Needing to be rescued? There is a story that is thousands of years old, about a guy who sure found out what it felt like. Literally. He was thrown overboard in the middle of the sea.

Jonah had been bad. He knew it. The sailors knew it. They all agreed that the only way to save the ship and themselves from the terrifying storm they were in was to throw Jonah overboard, as a sacrifice. Sure enough, it worked. The storm stopped. Everything was OK.

Except for Jonah. He was out there in the middle of nowhere. But (and this is the cool part) God sent a big fish to save him. Well, actually, the Bible says, "Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah" (Jonah 1:17). And that doesn't sound like such a great thing. But I started thinking about it in a new way because of what a friend of mine said. He said that if it hadn't been for this great fish—Jesus called it a whale when he talked about the story—Jonah might have drowned. After all, I realized, it does say that God prepares something for you, well, that means it's going to be good.

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