"Wrong Way" Jonah

In July, 1938, eleven years following the first-ever transatlantic solo flight of Charles Lindbergh, Doug Corrigan flew his makeshift aircraft from the West Coast of the United States to New York.  That was not news.  That feat had been done many times before, but Lindbergh’s former mechanic made a name for himself immediately after that would live forever in aviation infamy.

Shortly after landing, Corrigan filed a transatlantic flight plan that was denied based on the ragtag condition of his plane.  He was allowed, however, to return to California.  So, Corrigan aimed his aircraft westward, took off, did a 180-degree turn and disappeared into the clouds over the Atlantic.

Upon his arrival in Belfast, Ireland, 28 hours later, he asked, “Where am I?” and claimed to have gotten lost.  The name “Wrong Way” Corrigan was applied and has stuck throughout history, with experts split over whether his misadventure had been truly an accident or an act of rebellion against authority.

With Jonah, it was much clearer. 

“’Arise, go to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’ But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord….”  Jonah 1:2, 3a

God gave him a three-part assignment: 

1) arise, 

2) go to Ninevah, and 

3) preach the need for repentance from their sin.  

Well, Jonah did the easy first step.  He did arise.  One-for-three hitting of a baseball for 15-20 years may punch a professional ballplayer's ticket to the Hall of Fame, but it is not so good in free-throw shooting. Or obedience.  As any good parent instinctively knows, and the rest of us learn, partial obedience is disobedience.

Jonah didn’t need maps and a compass like Corrigan. He didn’t need concordances and commentaries to discover what God was saying.  Instead of heeding the clear and direct command of God, Jonah willfully took the wrong decision, catching a ship bound for Tarshish, a city 2500 miles west across the length of the Mediterranean Sea on the Iberian peninsula, to get away from the presence of the Lord.  (Pretty sure He was there, too.)

I would like to suggest that Jonah was not running merely from the presence of God but from His will. Had God been content to let Jonah lie around watching movies and playing games, with occasional trips to the mall just to hang out, I think Jonah would not have been in such a hurry to get away from Him.  However, God had higher, nobler things in mind for Jonah.  He selected Jonah to save a city. 

Think back to September 11, 2001.  If you had been chosen, say, a week to ten days beforehand, as the person who absolutely could prevent the attacks of that day by simply going to Boston (from whence the four flights originated) and warning of the coming disaster, would you have done it? Would you have gone there and spoken, knowing that thousands of lives would be saved?

Jonah was given the chance to save a city of 120,000 people from sure destruction resulting from their moral implosion.  That would be a city today greater than Ann Arbor or Lansing, about the same population as Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Topeka, Kansas—but he bailed.  Temporarily.

What does God have in store for your life? What is there—and you may not know yet—that He has for you to do, but you would rather follow your own path than His?  How many lives may be affected tomorrow or next year or over the next decade by your decisions today?  How will yours?
 

Don’t become known as “Wrong Way (fill-in-the-blank)” .  Fly to, not from, God and His will for your life.