The Will of God is that we Should see Him in Everything, including in our Depressions

But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD. And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. Jon 2:9-10 

One great but silent theme of the book of Jonah is the Sovereignty of God. He is not the God of Israel (or Jonah) alone but the God of the whole world. He knows the number of hairs on every one’s head and no sparrow can fall to the ground without his knowledge (Mat. 10:29-30). It may annoy but we are here at God’s pleasure and not at our own (Ps 115:3; Rev 4:11).  

Chapter two of the book of Jonah is very short. But it is reads like a depression manual. Jonah cried to God ‘out of the belly of hell’ – and God heard him. But Jonah understood where his ‘depression’ was coming from. And if we would be brutally honest with ourselves, most of us know where our depression is coming from. We may even know how we can get out of it. But we lack the courage.  

Jonah understood that it was his sin which had sent him to the deep. He also understood that it was only his God who could get him out, and that is why he ‘prayed unto’ him, ‘I will look again toward thy holy temple’. It is a lesson which Asaph had also learnt earlier in his heavy gloom: ‘For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning…When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end’ (Psa 73:14-17). And turning to God is how we always begin to get out of depression, ‘Salvation is of the LORD’. ‘And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land’ (Jon 2:9b-10).  

Thus the fish was a gift to Jonah from God. It saved him from drowning. Not all crises are meant to destroy us. For his saints, crises are meant to make us reflect, to purify us and to cleanse us. How you do you perceive the crisis you are in? One can view it as a curse from God and grow even more bitter (and help Satan in his evil). Or one can receive it as a gift from God to prevent them from drowning: ‘I know, O LORD, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me’ (Psa 119:75). The ‘corrections’ of God are always righteous, and they are not designed to bring us evil. Thus the psalmist thanked his God: ‘At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments’ (Psa 119:62).  ‘Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word’ (Psa 119:67). God give us the eyes to behold our sin, and God give us the courage to confess it.

Finally depression came to Job but he didn’t charge ‘God foolishly’. So sometimes even righteous people will have their ‘three days and three nights in the fish belly’. It happens, because no one can quite ‘know God to perfection’. Sometimes he hides himself and no one can ask him why. But in the end God makes something beautiful out of all his saints’ ashes. May yours too be something we shall read or talk about one day.