When I was a little boy, I almost drowned. And I must confess, IT WAS MY FAULT! My family was attending a party at the house of some friends. In their back yard, they had a swimming pool. It was an in-ground pool with a clearly demarcated boundary to separate the shallow end and the deep end of the pool.
I don’t remember how old I was at the time, but I clearly remember that I couldn’t swim. I was just old enough to no longer want to be seen wearing flotation devices, but still young and inexperienced enough to need them. It left me with two options. I either had to wear water wings (floaties, as my family calls them), or stay in the shallow end where I could touch the bottom and keep my head above water.
My mother had warned me several times to stay on the shallow side of the rope, but I ignored her. As I walked, I would periodically dunk under the water and emerge in the deep end and then back again. As I turned to make a trip back across the pool, I dunked under the water and into the deep end and, as I did, the rope went slack, preventing me from pulling myself back to the surface. Somehow, the dividing line had become detached from the other side of the pool. Consequently, I found myself sinking into the abyss of the deep end of the pool.
The next thing I remember is waking up on the side of the pool surrounded by some stressed out ladies, my mother chief among them. I had tried to walk at the very edge of what was acceptable, crossing over just as much as I thought I could get away with, and ended up out of my depth and in critical danger because of my own foolishness. By God’s grace, one of the teenage girls had seen me slip into the deep water. She alerted my mother and the two jumped into the water and pulled me up to the surface.
Humanity has a bad habit of going our own way, of assuming we know better, and finding ourselves sinking into messes of our own making.
I like to think of that as my own personal Jonah experience. Jonah is one of the most well-known characters in the Bible. His misadventure that resulted in him hitching a ride inside the belly of a massive fish is legendary. Interestingly enough, he too found himself sinking to the depths because of unwise decisions on his part and an unwillingness to listen to wise counsel from a voice that knew. Jonah didn’t recognize the error of his way until it was seemingly too late. We read these words from Jonah himself in Jonah 2:5-6a: “I sank beneath the waves, and the waters closed over me. Seaweed wrapped itself around my head. I sank down to the very roots of the mountains. I was imprisoned in the earth, whose gates lock shut forever.”
While it’s easy to see the foolishness of Jonah and young Jeremy in their respective stories, all of us have followed the same path at various times and in various ways. Humanity has a bad habit of going our own way, of assuming we know better, and finding ourselves sinking into messes of our own making. Often, we don’t recognize the error of our way until it is seemingly too late.
But, we serve a God of second chances. Even when it seems we’re too far gone, He stands ready to reach out His hand and pull us from the depths. Again, Jonah writes, “But you, O Lord my God, snatched me from the jaws of death! As my life was slipping away, I remembered the Lord. And my earnest prayer went out to you…”
We drown, not by falling into the water, but by failing to come up out of it.
We must remember: We drown, not by falling into the water, but by failing to come up out of it. Our error becomes final when we continue to pursue our own foolishness and resign ourselves to the reality in which we find ourselves. The truth, however, is that as long as our hearts still beat, there is a chance for redemption and restoration; there is still ample opportunity for God to breathe new life into our broken bodies.
The hope is that we’ll avoid the errors of Jonah and young Jeremy in the first place, that we’ll heed wise counsel and step back from the danger of our poor decisions. But, in the likely event that we find ourselves swallowed by the consequences of our own sins, let us not resign ourselves to sinking to the inevitable end. Rather, let us follow Jonah’s lead by calling out to the Lord and accepting the helping hand He is constantly extending to us.
