God Tends Us 1

Jonah 1:12-17

When tough times come along there always seems to be someone who offers the comfort of saying, “Things could be worse.” That’s not much consolation when things are bad, but it may be true in many situations.

Many people are familiar with the basic story of Jonah. God has summoned Jonah to be His prophet, to go to the city of Nineveh and preach so the people will turn from their sinful ways. But Jonah is not interested in serving God. Instead he travels in the opposite direction.

He went to the city of Joppa and boarded a ship headed for Tarshish, but God caused a storm to come up, a storm so great the ship was ready to sink. The sailors determined that Jonah was to blame but they didn’t know what to do.

What does Jonah tell them? According to verse 13, what did the sailors do first? What happened to the storm when they threw Jonah overboard? What happened to Jonah?

At first glance we can consider Jonah’s situation to be pretty bad. He has been tossed off a ship and swallowed up by a big fish. What could be worse?

Well, death could be worse. Although Jonah was in a pretty bad spot he wasn’t completely lost. His failure to obey God brought him to a difficult and stressful situation. He was in a terrible storm.

Once he admitted his guilt his situation changed. By telling the truth at least things got better for the sailors, but now Jonah is inside a big fish. Yet Jonah still has a chance of getting out of his tough spot. The fish may seem like a real problem for Jonah, but it saved his life, as God commanded.

We can be a lot like Jonah. We can try to avoid what God wants and end up in some pretty tight spots. Even when we try to make things better we may feel that we are still in a bad way.

But we must remember that God tends to us. God loves us so much that He watches over us and provides for us. Even though our situation may not be ideal, we must remember and trust that God is caring for us and providing us with the strength to get through the toughest situations.

DAILY CHALLENGE: How can you trust God in the storms of life?