May 12th, 2012

As we move on and begin to look at Tarshish and what running there meant for Jonah.

Read Jonah 1, especially verses 1-3

So many times when reading this story, it’s easy to put ourselves in Jonah’s place. Let’s face it we’ve all been in that spot where we’ve ran from God. When we run from God, how many of us simply ignore Him in whatever area He’s pushing us in, while still going to church on Sundays? We’ve compartmentalized how we run from God. That’s not what Jonah is doing here.

If we were to look on a map at the distance between Tarshish and Israel we would see that for an ancient Hebrew, it’s on the other side of the world. In fact scholars believe the trip during Jonah’s time would have taken about a year to complete. Think about what we talked about yesterday and the deep and how terrifying this would have been for a solid year.

Because this trip would have taken a year, let’s think about how much this would have cost. In our world, think about the cost of a yearlong cruise. Pretty expensive, right? Same is true for Jonah, only he didn’t live in a world of abundance and credit cards like we do. In order to pay for this trip, Jonah would have had to sell everything he owned.

This brings us to the sticky spot for us in our lives. For Jonah, running from God cost him more than he expected (WAY more if you read the entire story), and the same is true for us. When we run from God it usually cost us more than we realize and drags us further than we ever intended.