Jonah cried out to God from the belly of the whale. What a place for a prayer meeting! This should teach us that there is not place on Earth where we cannot or should not pray to God. There is no situation we can be in where God will be unable to hear us and deliver us. Note that the Hebrew for “hell” can also be rendered “grave” in many cases. It was as if Jonah was dead and gone and the fish’s belly was his tomb, but God heard him and brought him back.
And we pray:
O God, it is always better to follow You than to run from Your will. But even if, like Jonah, I am in great trouble due to my wanderings, I know that You will hear the cry of the truly penitent heart. We are all often in need of undeserved deliverance. As hymn writer and author of Rock of Ages Augustus Toplady put it, I am a “debtor to mercy alone.” Amen.