Where Is Your Tarshish?

This morning I was thinking about Jonah, that poor sap. How in the world did he imagine that he could run away from the presence of God? Doesn’t he know that God is everywhere? That would be ten-year-old me’s perspective on things.

Ahhhh... life is so simple when you’re ten. A child’s perspective on good and bad, holy and evil, are so simple, so true.

Get a little older and we all realize we have our own Tarshish. We have those places we run away to avoid God’s will in our lives.

Where do you find yourself running to avoid the Lord and His will in your life?

What are you choosing to do, for example, when you know you should instead pray?

What’s your drug of choice when the pain of life stuns you and you turn away from facing it?

Any false pleasure that replaces praying through the pain or discomfort is making it all last longer. Any moment you fill with frivolity to avoid sobbing on the bathroom floor extends the life of the pain.

The value of a good cry (or two), the value of turning to God and handing your fear, finally, over to Him, the value of reaching out to a Godly friend for support... it makes a BIG difference.

Every day, with every pain, with the worry of each day, we get to make a choice. Will we try to hide, suppress, and ignore it? Will we run away to Tarshish? Or will we willfully turn, face it, gripping the hand of the Lord tightly?

I still catch myself thinking “Silly Jonah—how did you not know?” Only now, it’s easier to understand that I am Jonah, too.

Wishing you a blessed Fast of the Prophet Jonah and the Great City Nineveh!