Which Jonah Are You?

“Sometimes it would be nice to just move to a desert and pray all the time. You know, just be alone with God.” That’s how my sister described being a stay-at-home mom who keeps others’ kids at her home. Now, I only have a three-year-old at home with two others in school, but I completely understand. For those who don’t spend days at a time home alone with kids, there is a serious patience-factor present every single minute.

This one wants that. That one wants this. This one’s hungry. That one doesn’t want whatever you just spent an hour fixing for lunch. Everybody’s tired, but nobody wants to take a nap. And then, you get the situation my sister found herself in with random kids getting sick without warning. It’s not fun.

Being a woman of God who carries on a near-constant two-way conversation with God as often as not, she looked around her house one day completely exhausted and ready to give up. She hadn’t had time to read her Bible or to do anything else for that matter in days. The house was a mess. The kids were screaming. She hadn’t had time to sit down and play the piano-one of her favorite spending time with God activities in what seemed like forever. She hadn’t even had much time to share her burdens with my mom or me on the phone. So, she was drowning and wishing, as we all do at times, that God had chosen to put her somewhere else in life that wasn’t so hectic and demanding.

Then she went to church.

Funny, how when you have turned your “God walkie talkie” on and tuned it to His channel, you will get the answers you most need. At church, the readings were about Jonah, and it happened to be at the uplifting part of the story, when Jonah was actually doing what God told him to do-saving Ninevah.

At the conclusion of the readings, the priest got up to give the sermon, and he said, “Which Jonah are you?” Of course, my sister knew the story of Jonah, but she’d never heard it quite like this.

Now in the Jonah Bible story, there are several parts that parallel our own experience. There is the call from God to go do something for Him. There is our reluctance to go for whatever reason the ego can come up with. Face it, we’re not always Mary saying, “Do unto me according to Your will.” There is the futile attempt to run from God. (He can find you, by the way, so running isn’t exactly logical.) There is the uplifting part when we actually do what He says to do. And then, there is the part when we get mad that we helped someone we’re not sure deserves it, and life gets better for them.

If you’re honest, I’m sure you relate to at least a couple of these parts of the story. So, the priest asked, “Which Jonah are you?” Are you the Jonah who tries to ignore God’s call? Are you the Jonah who tries to run from God’s call? Are you the Jonah who snivels and throws a fit over what you are called to do? Or are you the Jonah who does what God’s called you to do whether or not you like it or are particularly thrilled with doing it?

My sister said, “Now, how much clearer could that message have been? God called me to be with these kids. He called me to be a wife and a mother. I have no doubt about that, but here I am wanting what He called someone else to do. Up until that moment, I was Jonah sniveling and whining about what God wants me to do.” As usual, when you get a lesson, two things happened.

One, she began to appreciate her role in this world in a whole new light; and two, others began to come to her aid to give her a break. In short, she got what she ultimately wanted and needed, but she got the lesson to.

So, I ask you: “Which Jonah are you?”