The Tale of Jonah
It was the last leg of my trip home. I had spoken at a retreat and due to the preparation for the speaking engagement and a busy week ahead; I was looking forward to some quiet time on the plane. Occupying the window seat I thought I might be safe from having to make small talk since the lady in the aisle seat had immediately pulled out her magazine. Maybe I could just be to myself, but God had other plans in store for my afternoon when a man asked if he could sit in the middle seat.
You could tell he was a hard working man, a bit rough around the edges, with fresh growth on his cheeks and calloused hands. That part was fine, but as he eased into the seat next to mine I caught a whiff of the awful reeking smell of too much alcohol from the previous night that seemed to be emanating from his pores. He wanted to chat and so I asked where he had been and he told me he was on a quick turnaround trip just for the day to take his four year old daughter back to her mother. He lived about an hour west of me and was a carpenter. With the small talk behind us and the drinks having been delivered by the flight attendant—his drink of choice was a Heineken (as if he needed more to add to the smell) while mine was a diet coke. I felt relieved that I could finally get to my plan and pulled out my Bible and study guide to dig in and see what God had in store for me.
With a couple of lessons completed from Priscilla Shirer’s A Life Interrupted about the life of the prophet Jonah suddenly my seat mate turned to me and asked the question, “Isn’t Jonah the one who was swallowed by the whale?” The reply was yes that it was some kind of large fish and then we discussed what it must have been like in the belly of a fish for 3 days. He told me that he had heard the story in Sunday School as a child.
I asked him whether he had a church home in Glenwood Springs and he confessed that he really hadn’t gone to church in a long time. He said he believed in God and experienced Him most when he was out in nature. He declared that he wanted his daughter to know about God, but was afraid of what she might be learning in the church preschool where she was enrolled. That’s when I told him that the only thing that mattered is that she know Jesus as Savior---the doctrinal issues were not what was important. The conversation about salvation and heaven persisted for the rest of the flight—Jonah had to wait because God had a Divine Appointment planned for me.
As the plane landed and it was almost time to exit the aircraft the man turned to me and looked at me with kind, compassionate eyes and said, “I really enjoyed visiting with you. Thank you.” He then took his hand and wiped it on his pants as if to clean it off a bit then turned and offered it to me for a handshake.
As we parted he said, “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.” I thought to myself, I hope so… I hope it will be for all eternity.
Driving up the mountain toward home I was thinking about my plans to get my Bible study done, but how God had intervened using a story learned as a child in the life of a man who was hungry to hear about God. Maybe the whole plan for me to speak at the retreat was not for the women who were in the audience, but for the man on the plane who may have been trying to drown his problems with alcohol when what he really needed was Jesus.
Acts 4:10b-12 It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is “‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
Comments