COVID-19 Novel Encouragement Sample

From "He" to "You"

On one of the first days of the epidemic, I felt that there was something wrong with me. I took my temperature and found it was 37.2 degrees Celcius – not high, not low. To avoid passing anything on to either our older family members or our children, my wife and I decided to find a place where I could isolate myself. Those first few days of isolation, apart from having diarrhea, my temperature was always a little above 37 degrees.

During this time, I prayed over the book of Jonah, especially the second chapter, which contains Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish. As the rapidly spreading virus carried with it the smell of death, for a moment I felt as if it had separated me from everything I knew, just like the fish had with Jonah. Sunk to the depths of the oceanic abyss, covered by the shadow of death, Jonah no longer keeps quiet but cries out to the Jehovah he has been avoiding. Jonah 2:2 is essentially a summary of Jonah's prayer:

"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." (Emphasis added)

As he moves from "distress" to "Sheol", Jonah shifts the way he addresses Jehovah from the third person "he" to the second person "you". A similar shift occurs in Psalm 23. It was when he traveled through "the valley of the shadow of death" that the psalmist experienced the comfort he describes as "your rod and your staff". 

Christians need to have our own experiences of these "belly of the fish" prayers, because it is when we are in the valley of death that the "he" – perhaps once far away, perhaps even avoided – becomes the "you" to whom our hearts cry out.

No matter whether you are experiencing isolation of the body or of the soul, I hope you will turn your prayers towards "him" and then discover the "you" who has never left your side. Let us declare together to our hearts: "Salvation belongs to the Lord!"(Jonah 2:9b)

By He Qingyu，BICF-IMS