The Only Sign We Get

Jesus said it when they asked for a sign. “You’ll only get this one,” he said. “Jonah. That’s your only sign.

“What’s so special about Jonah?” we ask.

When we examine Jonah’s life, he is not a true picture of Christ in most observable ways. After all, when God said, “Arise and go to Nineveh,” he arose and ran in the opposite direction. Not exactly an example of the obedient Son. More like a replica of us, wouldn’t you say?

But when the storm arose at sea, he finally surrendered to the fact that he was the cause and these men would all die if he didn’t leave.

Jonah is a sign of dying to self – in our case – but the bigger picture is the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. That’s our sign for this age. Our only sign.

Few of us go willingly into the dark places of life. If there’s an easier way, we most likely choose that. We have to be thrown overboard most of the time. We pick our diversions from pain and shadows whether by over-stimulation, retail cures, or travel.

It’s harder for us as a rich culture because we have lots of choices that help us avoid the truth. Jesus said it would be harder for rich people to understand him because of our access to quick fixes and all the false ways we satisfy our deep longings. Poor people don’t have those options.

Jonah did not like the call God placed on his life. He hated the people God wanted to rescue. They had been most cruel to God’s own people, Israel, so why would He want to redeem them? Jonah had no answer to that and God didn’t give him one.

It was in the place of mystery, darkness, and riddle that He said, “Go into the middle of that. For me.”

Have you ever been there? Wondering why God would ask something like this of you? Why He wouldn’t explain your call?

Truth be told, it’s right there, inside the hollowed out darkness that we learn the most.

Richard Rohr put it this way in his book, Everything Belongs:

We must go inside the belly of the whale for a while. Then and only then will we be spit upon a new shore and understand our call.

The American culture in which we dwell is all about ascent. Our training for maturity teaches us almost nothing about descent. Only as we learn the big truth that marked the life of the greatest man (according to Jesus), the life of John the Baptist, do we even begin to understand that “He must increase, but I must decrease” (see John 3:30). It is here we begin to learn how to go down.

It amuses me at times how often that verse is misquoted. Almost always, it’s reversed. “I must decrease and He must increase.” But that’s not what it says, is it?

One way is works and the other is grace. If I try to make myself decrease, I’ve taken on an impossible task and forgotten that “without Me you can do nothing.”

But if instead I focus on letting Jesus get bigger and bigger in my life, I naturally become smaller. How do I do that? By practicing His presence, by becoming empty, by trusting His invitations even when I don’t understand or like them.

For six months I’ve watched my daughter do this. Texas, the one who ran from God’s call at seventeen. The belly of the whale has been uncomfortable and stinking. Everything is grey except the bright orange jumpsuits of convicted felons.

“Will you ever wear orange again,” I asked the other day. “I never wore it anyway – not this orange. Coral maybe, or melon. But not orange that is the new black.”

There was no other way for transformation to take place. The cramped, dark chrysalis is necessary for the rising, for the increase of Christ. The cave with the heavy stone is required. The descent into hell.

I once carried her in my dark womb but for years we’ve been enshrouded together in this dark place of transformation. We are not the same women we were in the beginning.

Together we’ve faced what we both denied for so long—we are not in control.

But oh how we know, those of us who have read and believed the story, that a way out is at hand. That the stone will be rolled away and the bright sunlight will stream in. The day will come that the appointed fish will vomit the transformed onto the shore.

There is a resurrection from death and the moment of that celebration makes it worth all we have to endure. Doesn’t it?

Our assignment for now is to stay with the unanswered questions, the pain of life, even when there’s no conclusion in sight. We are to remind ourselves this is only temporary.

Because there’s one thing for sure and we only get one sign.

Easter is coming!