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Jonah gets a wake-up call
If your family has an alarm clock or a phone with an alarm setting, you know what a wake-up call is. It’s a message that it’s time to shake off sleep and get moving!
Jonah was a man who needed a wake-up call. He wasn’t asleep in bed with his eyes closed, though. He looked like he was awake. But in his thinking, he was asleep to the need to obey God. Here is what happened:
Jonah lived a very long time ago, in Israel. He was a prophet of God. His job was to listen for God’s messages to His people, and then tell the people what God said. God’s messages were always helpful. They helped the people know how to act, where to go, or what to change about their thinking.
One day, God told Jonah to go to a big city called Nineveh, where many enemies of Israel lived. God wanted Jonah to help them change from doing bad things to doing good things.
Jonah did not agree with God. He did not want to help his people’s enemies. So he decided to run away. He made a plan to take a ship to Tarshish, a city far away in the opposite direction from Nineveh.
When the boat was out in the sea, a huge storm came up. The sailors were scared, and prayed to their gods for help. They even threw heavy things overboard to lighten the boat. The captain went to look for Jonah, who was asleep in the lower part of the ship. He told Jonah to pray to his God to save them.
Jonah knew that the storm came up because he was not obedient to God. So he asked the sailors to throw him into the water. He promised that the storm would end. And it did!
When Jonah was in the sea, God did not forget him. God sent a big fish to swallow Jonah. Jonah was safe in the belly of the fish for three days and nights. Then he prayed to God, and God answered him. God told the fish to spit Jonah out onto dry land.
Now Jonah was ready to follow God’s direction. He went right to Nineveh. He told the people there that the city would be destroyed soon. All the people, including the king, were sorry for the things they had done. They turned to God, and decided to stop doing wrong. Their city was saved.
Jonah’s experience was a wake-up call for him. He learned that he could not run away from God. Jonah’s obedience to God saved many people. When we listen for God’s ideas and do right, we can help others, too.
You can read Jonah’s story in the Bible, in the book with his name—the book of Jonah.
