“When the Waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; indeed, the deep trembled.”

Psalm 77:16

“When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down, When I was sinking down, O my soul! When I was sinking down beneath God’s righteous frown, Christ laid aside His crown for my soul, for my soul, Christ laid aside his crown for my soul.”

~ What Wondrous Love is This, O My Soul, 2nd Verse

The story of Jonah is well known and well loved. The prophet of the Lord is called by God to go to Nineveh to get them to repent from their ways. Jonah flees in the opposite direction for many reasons, chief among them because the prophet knows that God is slow to anger and abounding in stead fast love. In essence, Jonah knows Nineveh to be wicked and he doesn’t want God to forgive them.

He runs the opposite way. Have you ever run from God?

There’s a ship, a storm, and a boat load of scared fishermen. To make things better they throw Jonah overboard. The storm stops. Jonah sinks and the whale swallows him whole.

Jonah prays. God hears. The whale spits Jonah out. He marches to Nineveh; preaches a sermon and the whole city repents. Jonah gets mad. God teaches a lesson and shows Jonah the power and gift of forgiveness.

On the surface this story is powerful and teaches us so much. Today I want to dig a little deeper—I want to go under the surface.

The story of Jonah is about God’s willingness to go to the depths. Repeatedly in the Psalms we hear how you can never flea from the presence of God. You can never run so far away that you’ll escape His love or His embrace. When you play hide and seek with God, He lever looses sight of you. Ever.

But that didn’t stop Jonah from playing the game. The first 2 chapters of Jonah are a downward spiral—a free fall into the abyss. The word “down” is repeated in almost all of his actions.

Jonah goes:

• Down to Joppa to find a ship to Tarshish
• Down into the the ship to join the crew
• Down into the hold of the ship to fall asleep
• Down into the water when he is thrown overboard
• Down into the whale when it swallows him
• Down into the depths of the sea

This is more than a literary device. With each twist down the spiral, Jonah becomes more and more physically removed from the place where God desires him to be. Each step is further from Nineveh.

And, more than that, the depravity of Jonah’s sinking is into the chaos of the depths of the sea. Remember the beginning of Genesis. There was chaos over the face of the deep. The depth of the waters is the realm of chaos. This is where leviathan lives. If our Creator God is the one who makes order, than the depths of the sea is the furthest we can ever flee from Him—at least in the minds of the ancient Israelites. Jonah, in his trip down, is doing more than running from God’s call. He is stumbling and bumbling his way down deep. Not just in the opposite direction from God’s desire. Not just out onto the chaotic and unpredictable surface of the sea. Jonah hitches a ride in a biological submarine to go down into the depths of the chaos.

Have you ever made bad decision after bad decision? Have you ever dug yourself into a hole you can’t get out of? Will Rogers once said, “When you find yourself in a hold, quit digging.” Jonah couldn’t. With every move and every decision he was spiraling further down. In today’s vernacular of mental health these bad decisions are often attributed to intrusive thoughts. Do you let them win?

The reality is, we have all been Jonah. We have all been on a downward merry ground ride of our own making. We pile poor decision on top of poor decision. And, like Jonah, these plummets plunge us into the depths and land us in similar stinky and sticky situations. In the depths of a whale swimming in the depths of the deep—sure sounds like an empty void to me. Welcome back to pre-Genesis 1.

Here is the Good News. Jonah did everything wrong. He ran and ran. He went down and down. And He still wasn’t far enough away to escape the embrace of the Lord. As far as Jonah went down he was not so far down that God wasn’t able to lift him up.

Jonah prays from the belly of the fish. He prays, “I call out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice…”

When you are at your lowest, God hears you. When you’ve hit rock bottom, this is where God resides. He meets you in the depths. The depths of your own person chaos. The depths of your grief and sorrow. The depths of your depression and despair. You’re never out of His reach and you’re never beyond His love. He will make a way to you.

And, like Jonah, the Lord will lift you up.

This is why the waters tremble. For they know that their chaotic ways have been tamed by God Almighty. The one who orders creation speaks a word of order, hope, and life into your chaos as well. When we create it ourselves or are ushered into it by others or by circumstance. Your situation is never so far down that the hand of God is not present to pick you back up again. This is our hope.

Think for a moment on the lowest point you’ve ever been, and give thanks that you are no longer there.