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Day 255, or September 12. Real self exposed. Our thoughts today come from Jonah chapter

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2 verse 1. From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.

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Now the big picture surrounding this verse. Jonah was a prophet to the northern tribes

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when King Jeroboam II ruled. He prophesied at a time when the major superpower of the

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day, Assyria, was making threatening noises to the small nation of Israel, who stood

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in their way of easy access to another superpower, Egypt. The sliver of land we call Israel today

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was the strategic strip that linked the three continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Imagine

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Jonah's consternation when God called him to go to the capital city of Assyria, Nineveh.

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Add to that the fact that his name means pure, and he is being told to go to the impure Gentile

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heathen of Assyria, and you have a glimpse of the dilemma that Jonah faced. He opted

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for the easy solution of ignoring God and looking the other way. In fact, he sailed

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the other way. Asked to head northeast, he proceeded due west to the end of the world,

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or Tarshish, which was probably Kadiz, which is in the region of the Gibraltar Strait.

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There was nothing further west except the end of the world. That's how much Jonah

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didn't want to follow God's guidance. God had other ideas, however, and sent a fish

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to bring him back. Despite this account usually including a whale, there is no doubt that

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it was really a big fish.

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And now our action step for today. When we are in serious trouble, our real self tends

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to show, doesn't it? How would you have reacted to being swallowed by a large fish? I have

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to admit that praying may not have been my first thought. However, we find that Jonah

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prays, quoting various psalms as well as the book of Lamentations. The Bible is so

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much a part of him that it naturally comes out when he is under pressure. This would

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be more likely in our lives if we put the Bible in. We fill our lives with so many useless

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things, do something useful and read the Bible every day.