Jonah and Second Chances

I am seeing some interesting and somewhat disturbing similarities between this Biblical character that lived in the eighth century BC and my 18-year old son.

To my knowledge, Mitchell has not received a direct call from God to preach a message of coming doom as with Jonah and the Ninevites. However I know that God has called Mitchell to be one of his children. Like Jonah, Mitchell is "running away" from God (Jonah 1:3) and this has caused some very tumultuous storms to arise in his life that have "threatened to send [him] to the bottom" (Jonah 1:4). I have often feel like the sailors on the boat that said to Jonah, "What have you done to bring this awful storm upon us?" and I can truly relate to their act of throwing Jonah overboard to calm the storm! There were several times I wished I could do the same.

God sent a sea monster to save Jonah and he eventually repented and cried out to God. I am not sure who - or what - was Mitchell's sea monster or if he indeed cried out to God to save him as Jonah did. However I certainly did my share of crying out to God to save Mitchell from this seemingly impossible situation. This week God has answered my prayers as he did Jonah's. He has given Mitchell another chance. While I am sorry for the pain he is experiencing, I do think that God has "spit him up on the beach" (Jonah 2:10) to give him another chance.

I hope and pray that Mitchell will not waste his time in the storm and with the "monster", but will use this second chance to re-examine his faith and his anger at God. I pray that he will look at his future with a different perspective than previously. I hope that he does not follow in the path of Jonah who could not look beyond his own ideas of how God should act and his own pride to allow God to truly change his heart.

We are all Jonah. Our gracious God has given us so many "second" chances. I see that I have been like Jonah and sulked and complained because God chose to work in a way that I didn't understand. Yet, there have also been times of deep peace when I allowed my heart to be softened and believed that no matter the storms or the monsters I faced, God has a plan and it is good.