Ancient Anglican

Another means of distracting the Patient from true prayer, Screwtape writes, is to have the Patient pray to something and not the Enemy.

In the letters, Screwtape shares with Wormwood his knowledge, experience, and skill derived from his many years of tempting humans to abandon “the Enemy” (i.e. God).

Is the foreign policy the result of our need to avenge American honor or American deaths, as Jonah advocates, or is the policy rooted in the mercy and loving-kindness of God?

Jonah finally meets his God in his silence to God’s final question to him.

In his wish for death, however, Jonah is simply stating the obvious that a refusal to change is a choice for death.

It is the king of Nineveh and his subjects who fulfill the perfect fast of repentance as described in Isaiah 58:6.

The sign of Jonah goes beyond simply the understanding that Jesus, like Jonah, will spend three days in the belly of Sheol. The Sign of Jonah is only complete when the fish vomits the incorruptible Jonah out.

As we read through Jonah’s prayer, it is a prayer that we can make our own. It is a prayer of deliverance and thanksgiving said in the space between the chaos ending and restoration being obtained.

Jonah flees from God and God’s instruction into a tempestuous chaos. Like Jonah, the natural and consequent result in fleeing from God is that life becomes chaotic, and we are tossed like a ship caught in a tempest upon the sea.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

The story is about Jonah’s response to God’s call of redemption and reconciliation of the enemy. Our story is about the depth of God’s grace and mercy towards his disobedient servant Jonah and his rependant enemy Assyria.

There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree.