It Has Been a While
Not everything is as simple as we might think.
Well, the other day - out of the blue - I received a notice that I had a new subscriber to this blog. Trust me when I say that doesn’t happen every day. It also made me realize that I had not written in some time. I have reasons, maybe not good ones, but reasons nonetheless. For one thing, I have started to co-teach a ‘History of the Christian Church’ class on Wednesday nights at church. This is taking up a lot of my time in reading and researching. I am NOT complaining, I am learning so much and I love to teach. But it is a major reason why I haven’t been writing.
As most of you know, I also teach a Sunday School class at church. Now, this doesn’t take up much of my time, but I have been studying more than normal. I never thought I would devote extra study time to the book of Jonah, after all, I know the story backward and forward: Dude disobeys God, and God has a whale-eat dude. Dude learns his lesson and does what God wanted him to do in the first place. Pretty simple, we have all read the story.
Let me tell you, that little synopsis and others that are out there do an injustice to the book of Jonah and ultimately to God. The book is rich with lessons for all of us to learn. Lessons about repentance, selfishness, focusing on God, trusting God, God’s mercy, and just simply the greatness of God. I would highly recommend that when you finish reading this blog post, you pick up your Bible and read the book of Jonah (it is only 4 chapters long). I would also recommend you avail yourself of the abundance of resources out there to help explain the book - as always, be careful when using non-biblical resources - make sure they are from a credible source. I would also recommend you attend or watch this year’s “Secret Church” which will be held on April 21st and will be focused on the book of Jonah. You can find more information at Secret Church 2023 or plan to join me at First Baptist Simpsonville (Simpsonville, SC) to watch it together via video stream (free).
Well, not much of a blog post this time, I kinda cheated by focusing this post on the reasons I haven’t posted much. Again, my apologies. Let me close with this bit of information - so maybe, just maybe, you won’t have found this to have been a complete waste of time - there is no whale in the story of Jonah. It was a big fish.
17 Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights.
Now I am not sure Jonah cared - the inside of one sea-going animal being just as bad as another - but for goodness sake, this is the Bible, let’s get our facts straight. A fish is a fish, and a whale isn’t (remember from school, it’s a mammal). Until next time, God bless.