FROM TODAY'S READING (5/22/2014)...
"Prayer is the most deeply human action in which we can engage. Behavior we have in common with the animals. Thinking we have in common with the angels. But prayer - the attentiveness and responsiveness of the human being before God - is human...prayer is our core activity. The life of prayer, the practice of prayer, is at the center of the human enterprise."
- Eugene H. Peterson (Under The Unpredictable Plant, p. 111)
Jonah 2:1-10 (NLT) Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from inside the fish. He said,
"I cried out to the LORD in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead, and LORD, you heard me! You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea. The mighty waters engulfed me; I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves. Then I said, ‘O LORD, you have driven me from your presence. Yet I will look once more toward your holy Temple.’
“I sank beneath the waves, and the waters closed over me. Seaweed wrapped itself around my head. I sank down to the very roots of the mountains. I was imprisoned in the earth, whose gates lock shut forever. But you, O LORD my God, snatched me from the jaws of death! As my life was slipping away, I remembered the LORD. And my earnest prayer went out to you in your holy Temple. Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God’s mercies. But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the LORD alone.”
Then the LORD ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach.
