As Jonah, a prophet of God, recounts his experience, he explains that God himself sent the fish that swallowed Jonah for 3 days before vomiting him out again - alive and ready to repent in Ninevah.
Many people breeze by Jonah assuming his narrative to be allegorical - a story with meaning; but a story none the less. It can only be a story, they reason, because of course no one could survive in the belly of a whale. A person couldn't be swallowed whole, and even if they could, they would suffocate, or drown, or whatever else happens to a person who is swallowed by a whale.
For detail sake, the text says that God sent a "fish," not a "whale."
Our family has a recurring conversation when we learn that someone doesn't believe one miracle in the Bible, but they believe others. "Cafeteria style" believers of miracles, you might call them.
It's hard to believe that someone could survive in a fish stomach for three days, much less be swallowed whole and uninjured. But God sent the fish -- so who's to say what kind of fish it was?
On the other hand, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus had been in the tomb four days before Jesus raised him from the dead. Is it harder to believe that Jesus revived a dead man than it is to believe that a live man survived in a great fish?
Jesus made a blind man see. A lame man walk. A bleeding woman heal.
And after dying on the cross, Jesus himself rose from the dead to redeem our sins.
I'm sure hundreds of millions of people don't believe even a word of the Bible - so one miracle is just as much of a story as the next. That's intellectually honest on their part.
But I believe that if Jesus - the Son of God - could raise his friend Lazarus from the dead after 4 days...then surely God could send a great fish in which Jonah could survive as he contemplated his mission for God.
What do you believe?
