In the flurry of my newly-four-year-old grandbean's birthday party, while I washed Romaine lettuce under the tap - preparing a salad to accompany my daughter's lasagna - the child came to me. Grabbed my hand and said, fiercely intent, "Nana, tell me the story of Jonah."
"Later, love. I'm helping Mama make a salad. I'll tell it to you later, okay?"
But there was no time for stories during the party. The next day my phone rang. When I picked it up, a little voice, without so much as a "Hello," whispered, "Nana, would you read me a Bible story, please?"
All my grandbeans have the memories of elephants. A few decades past their ages, I do not. I'd already forgotten the request from the day before.
"Which one, would you like?" I asked, knowing the answer before it came - the one our night-time Bible storybook opens to automatically.
"Jonah. You said you'd read it to me yesterday." Well. Okay then. From memory, I dove into the requested Bible story, the one about a reluctant prophet named Jonah. God sent him with a message for the people of the city of Ninevah: back off sinning, or burn up sinning. Jonah, who didn't much like the Ninevahites, and would have just as soon seen them burn, boarded a boat going in the opposite direction.
(I love the way the Bible so honestly records the flaws of those to whom he gives big jobs. Since I've done a bit of fleeing from God's pointing finger, myself, it makes me feel less lonely.)
Things got worse rapidly. When a violent storm threatened to capsize the boat, the Bible says, Jonah recognized it as God's discipline for his disobedience. When he instructed his shipmates to throw him overboard they obliged.
In the water, a greeting committee waited - one very large fish. Jonah found lodging in its belly for three days before the creature headed for shore and heaved him up on the beach. (Just thinking of the stench makes me want to heave too.)
At the other end of the phone, my grandchild stayed quiet until the fish appeared. Then a blurt exploded in my ear, a breathless run-on question. "The big whale came to save Jonah, DIDN'T HE, NANA? To save Jonah from drowning!"
I stopped, startled, remembering my own thoughts as a child hearing the same story. To me the big fish represented God's discipline on a prophet who headed west when God told him to go east. It took me decades to comprehend the picture of God my grandbean had caught in four short years; to understand that sometimes the things we fear will devour us are actually sent by God to protect us from a far greater destruction.
Got a whale heading your way? Remember this: God is good. God is merciful. And God is the God of second chances.
