Where is the oddest place you have prayed?
Over the course of my life, I have prayed in hospital rooms and funeral parlors. I have prayed in abandoned parking lots and hotel ballrooms. I have prayed on mission trips in Iowa, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio. I have prayed at the mall of Washington, D.C. and on a subway car in New York City. I have prayed around the flagpole at local high schools and in city squares. I have prayed with people on the phone and over the radio.
But Jonah probably has all of us beat when it comes to praying in the oddest location. The Bible says that "Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish" (vs. 1). The fish should not be viewed as a punishment upon Jonah, but the vehicle of deliverance for him. It was the fish that saved him.
There are many different opinions about the plausibility and possibility of Jonah being in the belly of a sea creature for three days and three nights and living to tell about it. All I can say is that the Bible tells us it happened. Impossible? With God, nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37). The same God who created the sea and everything in it is perfectly capable of arranging things to preserve His prophet's life while He teaches him a lesson.
And what lesson did Jonah learn? We see it in his prayer. He recognizes that what has happened to him has been at God's initiative. God flung Jonah into the deep - but also rescued him. While Jonah realizes that he should have died ("I went down to the land who bars closed upon me forever"), God spared his life ("Yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God") before it was too late (vs. 6). It was at that moment, the last moment as Jonah's life was ebbing away, that He remembered the Lord and prayed. He made a vow of sacrifice and promised to fulfill it (vs. 9).
At the Lord's behest, the fish vomited Jonah up on dry land. Perhaps now Jonah will understand that he cannot flee from God and escape his calling!
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