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Jonah's prayer in the belly of the whale:
And Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the whale, and said: “Out of my distress I called upon the Lord, and He answered me. You raised my voice, because you cast me into the depths into the heart of the seas, and a river surrounded me, all your currents and your waves passed over me. Lett: I was fired before your eyes, but I look again at your sanctuary. The seaweed is in my head, I went down to the bottom of the mountains, the earth shuts me up forever, then I brought up life out of the pit. O Lord my God, when I fainted within myself I mentioned the Lord, and my prayer came to you to your holy temple. Those who consider lying vanities will forsake their own grace. Na, with the voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you, and I will fulfill that which I have vowed. To the Lord is salvation.”
And the Lord commanded the fish, and it cast Jonah onto dry land” (Jon 2).
Jonah's comprehension of the lesson:
“When my soul became exhausted within me, I remembered the Lord.” It seems that Jonah finally remembered the prayer of David the Prophet, who said: “In my distress I called upon the Lord, and I cried to my God. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry before him entered his ears” (Psalm 6:18). The Lord is standing at the door and knocking, waiting for us to open for Him, and the tribulation helps us to raise our eyes towards the Lord, from Whom alone is salvation, as Job the Righteous testified about Him: “And also He will lead you out of the face of adversity to an infinite breadth, and fill the provisions of your table with fat” (Job 36: 16).
I wish we would learn not to run away from the face of the Lord, but to seek His aid that overtakes us at the right time, and the prophet Isaiah testified about the many interventions of the Lord in the lives of His people, and said: “In all their distress He afflicted them. : 9).
And the Apostle Peter says: “Let no one of you suffer as a murderer, thief, evildoer, or meddler in the affairs of others. But if he is a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but glorify God in this way... Therefore, those who suffer according to God’s will, let them commend themselves as to a faithful creator in doing good.” (1 Peter 4:15, 16, 19).
Jonah felt that the Lord heard his prayer and answered it, while he was still in the belly of the whale, so he says: “I called upon the Lord in my distress, and He answered me. I cried from the bottom of the abyss, and you heard my voice.” We need not leave the presence of the Lord unless we feel and believe that our prayer has entered His presence and that He will answer in due time. We do not impose specific solutions on the Lord, nor a specific response time. Let us learn to wait for the Lord, and here is the example of the prophet Habakkuk, who saw the humiliation of God’s people and the victory of the wicked over the righteous. He prayed to the Lord, presented the matter to him, and stood waiting to hear the voice of the Lord. He said: “I stand on my watch, and on the fortress I stand and watch, to see what he says to me, and what I answer for my complaint” (Hab 2 : 1).
There is always time and space between giving the promise of salvation and fulfilling that promise in the present. Jonah felt the Lord's response to his prayers immediately, but he did not come out of the belly of the whale until after three days. And Abraham, the father of the fathers, took a promise from the Lord to give birth to Isaac, but the promise was not fulfilled until after 25 years, as we also mentioned here on St-Takla-Haymanot in other sections. And God gave Adam the promise of salvation from the moment of his fall, but salvation did not take place except in the fullness of time. I wish we would entrust our affairs in the hands of the Lord and trust that He will respond at the appropriate time, and believe that the Lord has salvation, and as the psalmist says: “Wait for the Lord. I hope in Him. The Lord is good for those who hope for Him, for the soul that seeks Him. It is good for a person to wait silently for the Lord’s salvation” (Lamentations 3:24-26).
The prophet Jonah presents his situation before the Lord:
He confessed before the Lord all that he felt: "You cast me into the depth, into the heart of the seas. And a river surrounded me. All your currents and your waves passed over me. And I said, 'I have been driven out from before your eyes.... Waters have encircled me to the soul. An abyss has compassed me. Grass has swirled around me.'" The sea is in my head. I descended to the bottom of the mountains. The earth closes above me forever.” The truth of the Lord knows all this, but He wants us to talk to Him. He asked this, saying: “Come, let us reason, says the Lord. If your sins are like scarlet, they will be white as snow. If they are red as vermilion, they become like wool.” (Is 1:18). He also says: “Remind me, and we will judge together. Speak so that you may be justified” (Isaiah 43:26).