From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the LORD his God (Jonah 2:1).

Since we are currently looking at Jonah, this recent news clip was too good to pass up.  

Earlier this month, Michael Packard, a lobster diver, was 45 feet deep in the coastal waters off Provincetown, Massachusetts, when he was suddenly gulped inside the mouth of a humpback whale.

"All of a sudden, I felt this huge bump, and everything went dark," he told WBZ-TV News. 

At first he thought he had been attacked by a shark, as great whites frequent the area, but he soon realized he couldn't feel any teeth.

"Then I realized, 'Oh no, I'm in a whale's mouth ... and he's trying to swallow me,'" Packard said. "And I thought, 'OK, this is it— I'm gonna die.'" He estimated that he remained trapped inside the mouth of the leviathan for 30 seconds, and he was still able to breathe through his scuba respirator. But then the whale, clearly keen to remove its unwelcome, and inedible, guest, surfaced, shook its head and spat him out. 

"I just got thrown in the air and landed in the water," he said. "I was free and I just floated there. I couldn't believe … I'm here to tell it."  Picked up by his topside crew, he was taken to a local hospital, treated for minor injuries, and was soon able to return to work.

The Greek word for “fish” is ichthus.  The early Christians, facing persecution, used ichthus and a fish symbol as a code to identify themselves to each other.  The Greek letters in ichthus can serve an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.”

Is it possible that what looks to us like a fearsome sea beast is actually Jesus in disguise?

Think about it: if God does not “send a great fish” to swallow Jonah, Jonah is drowned and dead.  So what looks and feels like a tomb is in fact a kind of womb for Jonah.  The fish, which looks at first like a disaster, is in fact a safe place for Jonah, until he is ready to be “born again” (i.e., vomited out by the fish!)

How we pray changes the ways we see and understand our circumstances.

How we learn to see our circumstances, especially those that feel dark, dank, damp (and uncomfortably digestive) can mold the ways in which we learn to pray!

Any aspects of your life that feel like the inside of a fish belly?  Could it be that you’re not there “by accident,” but by the purposes of God – purposes to do you good, to help and heal you, to more deeply form you in the image of Christ?  What might it look like for you to pray … differently … from the belly of your particular “fish”?