The Disposing
Jonah 1:5 – “every man cried out to his god and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load.”
And threw the cargo…
We just saw how the mariners, each cried out to his god to help them out of the terrible situation they were in. Now we see them going one step further.
• No other gods but One
Notice it says that “every man cried out to his god and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea.” It looks like they did both things at the same time – they cried out and threw the cargo into the sea. It doesn’t seem like they prayed to their gods and waited to see if they would come to their rescue before they decided to do something about it themselves.
For those who don’t know the Lord personally, and for those who worship other gods, there’s no way they can have a testimony of their ‘gods’ intervening in their lives and bringing about a solution to their situations or a change to their lives. And the reasoning is simple – if there is no other God than the Lord God Almighty, the Great I Am, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, there’s no way that prayers to anyone else but Him, can be answered. It seems like they were also aware that their prayers were going nowhere and so they simultaneously did all they could to ease the situation they were in. This seems like a very sad predicament for anyone to be in – to have a problem, to cry out to the one they thought would be able to help and to not have a response.
• Prayer and Work
It seemed like they had come to a point in their understanding about their gods, where they realised that nothing much happens when they pray, and so they immediately also work things out themselves, which then begs the question, “Why pray?” Had they been through experiences like Moses and the people of Israel had been through in the wilderness, like the terrible situation where the Red Sea was ahead and Pharaoh’s army was behind, and had they heard the words that Moses spoke to the people in Exodus 14:13-14 “Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever. The LORD will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace,” then perhaps they would have cried out and just waited. But like I said earlier, they were crying out to no one. If one is crying out to ‘no one, then no one will come to help, and sadly, that’s exactly who helped them – no one. May I add a little note here - if not for the Lord’s intervention the life of us The Church, we’d still be praying to ‘no one.’
When we look at the above two scenarios – the mariners on the Mediterranean sea, and the people of Israel at the Red Sea, (not too far away), we find two different approaches to handling problematic situations. One was praying and working and the other was merely waiting on the Lord to work on their behalf. There’s something we can learn about praying and working from these two incidents. Just because Moses told the people of Israel to stand still and wait for the Lord to fight their battle at that point of time, does not mean that every time we The Church encounter difficulties, that we are to merely pray and do nothing to help solve the problem. There are times when we need to pray and do nothing, and there are times when we need to pray and are supposed to do something about the situation as the Lord leads.
Take Noah for example. When God told him to build the ark because he was about to destroy the world, he could have taken the easy way out by merely praying and asking the Lord to change His mind about destroying the world, instead of taking the tough road of obedience to God, and building the ark so that he, his family and the animals and birds could be saved. We The Church need to know when to only pray, when to only work and when to both pray and work.
All too often, in my growing years, when I was immature in my faith in the Lord, I had a warped understanding of prayer and work, and very often I’d find myself praying about things I should have been working on. For example, while in school, when I needed to study hard to pass my exams, I would prefer to rather pray that the Lord would lead me to study answers to questions that He knew would appear in the question paper, (not knowing then that God is just and doesn’t work that way), so as to minimise the effort I took to study. As you can imagine, I was so wrong in my approach and I had to face the consequences of my lethargy and careless praying. Here’s a quote by Augustine, concerning praying and working. “Pray like everything depended on God and work like everything depended on you.” But we need to know what situations call for what kind of response.
• 'What' really matters
The job of the mariners was the transport the cargo from Joppa to Tarshish, but due to the present situation they were in, they had to make a decision as to what was really important to them – their ship and their lives or their job. It seems a lot like the situation we are in presently in the world with this Corona Virus, where people are having to make similar decisions – choices between their jobs and their lives; and several people are choosing their lives over their jobs and so quitting their jobs.
The Church too is having to make decisions during this pandemic as to what's really important and what can be done away with. And interestingly it's turning out that we are getting a lot more creative and effective in what we do recently, than we've been in years gone by.
• 'Whose' really matters
The value of the mariners’ job (to transport goods from one place to another), suddenly faded into oblivion, when compared with the value of their ship and their lives. Not only did they have to make quick mental calculations to decide which was more important but they also had to decide which was more precious to them - other people's belongings or their ship and their lives.
It's true of most of us today as well. When left with a choice between saving what belongs to us and what belongs to others, most of us would choose to protect our own, rather than what belongs to others. How opposite to that of Jesus who willingly, lovingly, graciously and mercifully laid down His life, (and was raised again), so that we could be saved from eternal death and have a new and eternal life.
We can be thankful that we don't need to make a choice between saving our lives and other people's lives - we can save both ours and theirs. We were saved by the Lord so that we can share the good news of the Gospel with others, so that they too might be saved.
• What doesn’t really matter
Many churches had so many overhead expenses that were truly unnecessary and were adding nothing to the growth of the church, (either numerically or spiritually), and with the lockdown, they’ve come to realise that they could be as effective, if not more, without some of these huge overhead expenses. But let’s be careful as we make these decisions to dispose of the seemingly non-essential, that we don’t dispose of the essential in lieu of the non-essential. We need to remember that people are more important than buildings, since The Church was never a building – it was always people. The quicker we realise that the Church is not the building but rather, the people, the quicker we will see results in Church growth like never before. It will also serve to accelerate the process of making disciples of all nations.
Let’s make it a point in these turbulent times to do all we can to not just stay afloat but to make headway in the journey that we’ve been called to of walking with the Lord and inviting other to join us on this journey.
To lighten the load
The reason behind them wanting to dispose of the cargo was clearly spelt out in this verse – ‘to lighten the load.’ Different people have different traveling styles – some travel heavy and some travel light and there are usually reasons for these styles. But when the going gets rough, there comes a time in the journey when we need to stop and ask ourselves what we really need and what we don’t, for the express purpose of alleviating the load we carry. I recall when my mother, two younger brothers and I cycled and walked long distances for no apparent reason, she would dispose of things that weighed us down, so as to lighten the load. There were times we would rather eat the food we had rather than carry it on our backs, as it was easier to carry it in us than on us. The same is true of people who go hiking and trekking – they carry only the bare essentials. Athletes wear as little as possible to make themselves as light as possible.
Let’s ask ourselves what we, The Church in the world can do to lighten the load so as to move faster, and become more effective in our task of making disciples of all nations.
Michael Collins
