There are two reasons why I chose to dive with Jonah when kindly offered the opportunity to speak in one of these sessions. The first is that many moons ago, I had to learn and memorise the story in Hebrew.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 The second reason is that I find the story makes me smile.

Let me tell the tale of Jonah and the whale way down deep in the middle of the ocean.

It does not make me smile that Jonah is swallowed by a whale. I am aware that scholars debate this question, but for me in terms of understanding the story it is not relevant. You are welcome to question me about that later.

It makes me smile not because Jonah wants to run away from God, although there are times when I have sympathy with that…. Rather it makes me smile because Jonah struggles with what God is like. One of my heroes is J B Philipps, who translated the NT into modern English. He had an expression, ‘your God is too small’. Jonah on the other hand saw that God was too big and was uncomfortable in the presence of the divine. So he runs…. Gets a one way ticket to Joppa, but unfortunately does not get there, instead he ends up in Ninevah…