Here continues from Unheard Conversations Part 1, and i’ll pickup where i left off for the sake of time, short attention spans, and space. In short summary, the focus is on the sailors, their whispered dialogue between two select men, their re-playing of the events of the day, and the miraculous encounter with God Almighty, and them being pressed to decide if the Lord is God or not.

          In their recounting of the day, don’t you think they were pursued, haunted by it all, and the very words of Jonah, “save yourselves and throw me over the side” meaning to treat him as a sacrifice, don’t you think it changed the way they saw the world and influenced their decision-making abilities? They tried to save themselves to no advantage. They threw all their cargo into the sea ruining their bottom line profit margin, but the storm increased and raged on with the ship every moment being threatened with complete destruction. They appealed to their gods with their frantic prayers, “every man unto his god”, and that was a total dead end street. They seemed to do everything possible to keep from being involved with God, but in the end, He was the ONLY one who could help them.

The sailors went on to make sacrifices and vows to the one true God after things calmed down. They had met God, and were profoundly changed by the situation, caught up in the wake of Jonah’s rebellion. It would appear they made a decision to follow after the Lord.

The entire event was beyond their reasoning. i mean, think about it…how would you react if you were in the storm of the century, and it all went from roaring and raging to dead still because you did something, from your standpoint, unthinkable until that moment? From their natural mind, they saw it as doing a radical unconscionable thing, for illogical reasons, to gain an outcome of hope and survival.

Here’s another idea: God was willing to pitch the entire ship, cargo, and crew onto a trajectory of chaos and destruction to get at Jonah. Initially, God said, “Go”, Jonah said, “No”, God said, “Yes you will”, Jonah said, “i will not”. Then Jonah said, “i’ll run far away”, and God said, “I’ll bring you back.” And that’s exactly what happened. Finally, Jonah got to catch a ride in a very large fish where he probably died and God brought him back to life a few times. Alive! Dead! Alive! Dead!, Alive, and vomited out on a foreign beach head. This time though, when God said, “Go”, Jonah said, “Ok”. God got his attention.

From the sailors point of view, there was this thing we call nature, and somehow, we, today, tend to see “nature” as something outside of the Lord and that’s simply not true. Every aspect of nature expresses the character which God wishes it to express. i believe there are in-your-face facts gathered only by observation, like the raging sea, and only by personal observation do we grasp the concept of a raging sea, but observation can’t give us knowledge. C.S. Lewis wrote that knowledge requires reasoning, and i can see that is true. With that knowledge born from reasoning, understanding is required, meaning the union of observation and reasoning… it’s putting things together, or connecting the dots to an “ah-ha” moment and an action item called wisdom. The raging storm was totally within their understanding, they had reasoned through their observations in the past to have the knowledge and understanding of what was happening in the present. But the part where Jonah was thrown into the sea, swallowed by a completely beyond-all-reasoning sized fish, which, by the way, was right on time to do God’s bidding in exactly the right place, and then for the raging storm to suddenly cease… that blew their mind. To think of the events as somehow an isolated fluke of nature was out of the question. Maybe the idea began to seep into their minds that the living God Himself, the only real God was not only the cause, but was a cause and effect within Himself. God’s interaction with them, and us, is not a one way street of action, but a two way street of interaction, which, in itself is a cause, and all His benefits come from it. The Lord is never causeless, never doing stuff just for the doing. Can you see that? God’s miraculous isn’t just an event which happens to us, but is an opportunity for relating and corresponding with the Lord. If He didn’t extend us the opportunity, we would not and could not interact with Him.

We love to see miracles, but we need to see the bigger picture, which is…miracles are, and i say this with all emphasis, miracles are not merely an event without cause and without results. The “cause” IS the activity of the Lord, and the results follow in accordance with the natural, physical, or material world, as He has designed it.

Miracle > Astonishment > Revelation > Decision. Those sailors were swept into the supernatural, the beyond of the beyond of the Living God. So, was God’s pursuit of Jonah the only reason? Scripture doesn’t spell it out, but knowing the Lord as i do, i’d say… no. He brought the entire crew into a miraculous event, an undeniable event to not only capture Jonah’s attention, but for the crew to choose what was real.

Most commentaries always focuses on Jonah, but as in all unheard conversations, the back dialogue in the white space, all the characters involved were affected, and effected, meaning God brought about the situation and all those involved were deeply impacted.

Friends, God is entirely capable of getting our attention when He needs to. It’s not that He is “trying to do something”, as if He might fail. Believe me, if He can get the attention of a hard headed prophet like Jonah, along with a bunch of pagan, dead-end god worshipping, crusty old sailors, you can rest assured He can do the same to you, me, and anyone else when He needs to. That’s how much He loves us in that He’s willing to go with us into the worst situations, making all things work to the good of those who love Him. Even in the midst of a raging storm, the Lord has a plan. Pay attention! The Lord is speaking to you. Don’t just read the black letters, see the white space too, there are libraries of God’s wisdom buried between the letters, lines, and paragraphs.

Here ends this program, part 1 and 2 about of the unheard conversation, meaning it’s not in scripture, but it surely occurred. i call it a white space conversation, meaning the dialogue between the letters.