Jonah 2:9-10
9But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation belongs to the LORD!”
10 And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
In Moby Dick, Father Mapple delivered a sermon from the book of Jonah as a send off to the whalers on their dangerous voyage. He embellished a lot of the story but Moby Dick is fiction, a novel. Many regard the book of Jonah as fiction but there is one who didn’t. In Matthew 12:40, Jesus said,
40 For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Jonah was real and so is his account of being trapped in the belly of the great fish. His prayer was real, it was answered, and he made good on his vow to serve the Lord and go to Nineveh.
Many times, we pray promises of service when we are trapped, in danger, or in despair. We are guilty of embellishment like Father Mapple in the novel. Sometimes our promises to the Lord are more like a novel than a vow. Isn’t it great that God is not like us? Jonah ran in the opposite direction when called to go. Jesus walked right to Calvary. He kept his promise. He was trapped and was risen. We are trapped, as it were. Let’s not make rash vows but let us be like Jonah and make good on our promises of sacrifice and praise because we will emerge from our room…
And our tomb.