The Real Meaning of Life

https://biblehub.com/nkjv/jonah/2.htm

Jonah’s prayer, while in the belly of the fish is short, but so full of lessons.

We often get the impression that Jonah was thrown overboard and was immediately eaten by the fish. But if you read Jonah’s prayer, it doesn’t read that way. In fact, it reads as if he was pretty close to death, if not truly dead!

First of all, let’s talk about the word “Sheol”, the word everyone associates with “hell”. So many scriptures are interpreted as the wicked going to hell when they die; if Jonah was in Sheol, hell must be in the belly of a fish, right? So when the wicked die and are buried, they apparently go through a worm hole until they reach the sea where they are eaten by a big fish.

I’m being facetious of course, but when I put it in my own words, sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it? So should we define the word Sheol, as found in scripture, as hell? I think not, and that said, I think all arguments in favor of hell are now null and void.

“The waters surrounded me, even to my soul”. That sounds like a near-death experience to me. “Weeds were wrapped around my head”. Now I consider myself very fortunate that I was always off-duty whenever my department responded to a call of a drowning, so I never saw a drowning victim first hand, but weeds around their head is common. Anyone who has been under a natural body of water knows there is underground plant life, and a drowning victim can easily get tangled up in that plant life.

“And when my soul fainted within me…” How many times do victims close to death cry out to God; even atheists cry out to God when they’re close to death, or perceive that they are. So it may very well have been that Jonah had actually lost responsiveness and was in the natural process of dying when God saved him. And God did.

“Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy.” Most everyone that thinks of an idol thinks of a physical statue or painting or something of that nature that you bow down to a worship. But idols can be many things. Your TV can be an idol. Your car can be an idol. Heck, we even have shows called “American Idol” because of the vast number of people who worship celebrities. When the Beatles came to America, teenaged girls were crying because they got to meet them; how many ever cried at church during worship because they loved God so much. So an idol doesn’t have to be a physical thing. Idolatry extends even to the mind. So, if you have idols, breaking the 1st Commandment, you are separating yourself from God and His Mercy. Jesus said (and I’m paraphrasing), “Many will call my name but I will not know them”.

This doesn’t mean that if you worship idols, God will ignore you, it simply means that when you choose to separate yourself from God, you also separate yourself from His blessings. But you can go back at any second, and He will welcome you back with open arms.

And at the very end of Jonah’s life, as he nearly drowned in the ocean, he says that he remembered the Lord and his prayer went up to heaven. That’s all it took, to return to God. And God opened the door the Jonah himself had shut, and brought him back in, and saved his life.

Isn’t it wonderful to have a God that we can ignore, turn our backs to, taunt, use His name in vain, even call Him names like “Skydaddy”, and all we have to do is turn back to Him, and He will accept us.

He forgave the thief on the cross in his last moment of life.

Praise God!