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Sometimes, as at the close of 2023, the news is so bad, you just want to drop below deck for awhile and make the world go away. 

Alain de Botton in his classic, The News, reminds us that it hasn’t always been this way.  That our ancestors survived nicely in a news-free world— hard as that may be to believe.  As for us, he says the trouble with the modern newscast is that it downloads wave upon wave of all the world’s griefs without offering a single proposal about what we might do about them:  

“Faced with the scale of the problems which the news highlights, individual initiative can seem counterintuitive and pathetic.  Rather than an impression of political possibility, an encounter with the news may usher in an impression of our nothingness in an unimprovable and chaotic universe” (The News, 2014).

The result is, for the committed news-watcher, a degree of stupefaction which may send us below the deck with the prophet Jonah.  Ship-wrecking waves may be breaking the vessel into smithereens, rogue waves crashing all around – “but Jonah had gone below deck and fallen sound asleep.”

Such little pods of escapism are so attractive in the ‘worst of times.’  But they are hardly where we want to find ourselves.  No wonder the captain of the storm-tossed ship grabs hold of Jonah, when he falls over him in the dungy hold, and shakes him awake with a bellow:  “How can you sleep?”  Are you so zombified?  “Up and call upon your god!”  Sleeping in this kind of stormy weather is an outrage! 

This remains true, especially when you might be able to be of some help.  Just getting back on deck can provide interaction, community — even solutions!  Here is where you will find a desperate group of sailors who are clinging to railings and lashing themselves to pinions just to keep from being washed overboard!   Here are the seekers, looking to the stormy heavens and calling on their various gods with desperation!  Here are people waiting to hear your proposal — any proposal!  “Where do you come from, what’s your story?”

As it turns out, Jonah has exactly the proposal that was needed.  Once they put his plan into action — with a great splash — the storm ceased immediately!  Now there was something we would all love to have observed — an immediate calm.  Immediate calm? It makes you think that jettisoning the odd individual is the exact solution we need these days, in our storm-tossed modern world! 

“And the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows” (Jonah 1:16).

It also makes you think that the stormy seas must have heard a voice which they had heard before, and would hear again — from “the master of wind and the sea:” Peace, Be Still! What manner of voice!

No, escapism is not an option, however stormy the weather.  That’s the story of Jonah.  You are needed on deck. “How can you sleep!”

Not only are you needed, but the deck is really your only option.  That’s the rest of the story of Jonah.  If you insist on the path of escapism, you may end up more isolated than you could ever have imagined. That road can take you into a confinement so solitary, so dark, that you doubt if you will ever see the light of day again!  

“For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.  Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head  at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever”

Mercy, the only good thing about such a black hole is that it can bring you to your knees.  And that, strangely enough, can get you back on your feet!

“Yet I shall again look again to your holy temple.’ When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you,… I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice…    With the voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay” (2:10).

Yes, three days in the bowels of solitary and you are more than ready to face the music again. No matter how discordant. Even when it makes you sea-sick.To walk that hard road of obedience. To be engaged. To be your best.