The Sign of Jonah
Yesterday I wanted to attend a prayer meeting in Walnut Creek that started at 7:30 PM. I decided to leave work 15 minutes early so that I could get there pretty close to the starting time, when I leave work normally I arrive in Lafayette at around 7:45 and then it would take me another ten minutes to get to the meeting so it would be pretty late. So I figured I would take the train before my normal one.
Now, I'm not saying what happened was done by God to get
me or to punish me for slipping out of work early but... it sure seemed like it!
I got to the Embarcadero Bart station two minutes before the 6:58 train arrived, got a seat on the train and we set out beneath San Francisco Bay bound for the east. I was reading my bible and feeling smug about having been slick enough to manage getting to the meeting in Walnut Creek even though it was a work night.
About half way through the Trans-Bay Tube the train came to a sudden and unexpected halt. It did not move again for another hour. I had the thought as I sat there with hundreds of fellow passengers deep below the waves of San Francisco Bay that I was like Jonah as he fled from Nineveh and God struck his ship with a great storm because of his disobedience.
In the end I did not get home until 9:00 PM, an hour and fifteen minutes later than normal, I didn't get to go to the prayer meeting at all.
Although I'm sure (sort of) that God did not halt thousands of people on their way home just to teach me a lesson I still decided that skipping out of work early for a prayer meeting is probably not the best thing to do. ;-)