The Gift Of The Storm

Go . . . and deliver the message I have given you.

Jonah 3:2

Today's Reading

The LORD gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.”

But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the LORD. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the LORD by sailing to Tarshish. . . .

Now the LORD had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights. . . .

Then the LORD ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach.

The LORD spoke to Jonah a second time: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message I have given you.”

This time Jonah obeyed the LORD’s command and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to see it all. On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” The people of Nineveh believed God’s message, and from the greatest to the least, they declared a fast and put on burlap to show their sorrow.

Jonah 1:1-3, 17; 2:10; 3:1-5

Storms track across the radars.

Snow falls on cedars somewhere up in the mountains, piles of white weighing down pines.

Clouds keep churning out on the ocean and up the battered coasts and along the ragged edges of you. Escape can seem alluring.

Advent can feel like an advent of crises. A whole string of Jonah-days brazenly begging you to head in the opposite direction, to get away from the dark underbelly of people and agendas and loving the unlovely and loud. Jonah finds a boat and buys a one-way ticket and sails due west, as if a man can ever escape the grace of God. As if finding your ship isn’t sometimes more like jumping ship.

A storm meets Jonah head-on in his.

It shakes the drowsing man awake—God’s coming, His Advent, always shakes us to awake. And it cups hold of Jonah’s wet, disoriented face and flat out startles him with the gift of utter dependence. Jonah-days chase you for tender reason. The Hound of Heaven storms after you till you have the gift you need.

You aren’t equipped for life until you realize you aren’t equipped for life. You aren’t equipped for life until you’re in need of grace.

In the moment of realizing your limitations, your shortcomings, your inescapable sins, all that you aren’t—in that moment of surrendered lack, you’re given the gift you’d receive no other way: the gracious hand of an unlimited God. Repentance, turning around, is the only way to be ushered into grace.

Jonah turns from his running, owns his own complicity, sacrifices himself off the edge of the boat to save his boat mates. He descends the depths and tosses and turns three days in the curdling, churning belly of the fish before being heaved up alive on dry land.

Then he turns back. Turns back to God, turns back to Nineveh to plead with them, with everybody, to just turn back.

“We all want progress,” writes C. S. Lewis. But “if you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”^a

She who turns back soonest is the most progressive. She who repents most makes the most progress—you always go farther when traveling light. She who repents of seemingly little sins knows that all sins are great—and knows a greater God. Repentance is as much air to a Christ-follower as faith.

Nearly eight hundred years after Jonah, another Man boards a boat and sleeps through a great storm. He awakens to anxious boat mates. He calms the storm—not by owning His complicity but by taking on ours. He assures, “One greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12:41). Because He doesn’t calm one storm but all storms. He casts Himself into our waves, into our storms, into our depths; He sacrifices Himself for our saving; and He is binding the broken and raising the dead and re-membering you. Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, but Jesus took three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, in the belly of death, so no one else would ever have to.

He did not abandon you in the ultimate storm of your soul. He will not abandon you in the immediate storm of your now.

He asks you, calls you, begs you to believe. Will you believe the wild miracle of a storm and a resurrection from the belly of a fish? Will you believe the wilder miracle of the Word made flesh, God with skin, God in a trough, God on a Cross? Will you believe in your own resurrection from the belly of sin? Will you believe in miracles? You can whisper that word repentance—and find yourself resurrecting. Turning around and resurrecting.

There’s snow falling heavy over a cabin tucked under pine trees right now. Storms could get worse in the north today. Or closer.

Advent never stops coming for you.

Turn around and watch it come. Just slow and turn around.

Unwrapping More of His Love in the World

Write down one thing you repent of today. Draw a heart around it. Tuck it under the Jesse Tree as your gift to Jesus of a contrite heart, and pray that Jesus would help you give up this sin.

[Advent] is a time of quiet anticipation. If Christ is going to come again into our hearts, there must be repentance. Without repentance, our hearts will be so full of worldly things that there will be “no room in the inn” for Christ to be born again. . . . We have the joy not of celebration, which is the joy of Christmas, but the joy of anticipation.

JOHN R. BROKHOFF

A Moment for Reflection

When have you found yourself running from God? How did He draw you back to Himself?

In what ways have you seen God calm the storms in your life?

Thank God that He invites you to turn around, to be resurrected.