A Ship to Tarshish

But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.

Jonah 1:3.

Jonah “rose up to flee” from the purpose of God, and “he found a ship.”  You will always find a ship when you choose to go away from God.  There will always be a ship to take one in the opposite direction from the will of God, but whether or not that ship arrives at the intended destination is another story.  Safe arrival is never guaranteed in that package.  The parable of the prodigal son teaches the same lesson.  There is usually somewhere to go when one chooses to depart from the Father’s house, some “far country,” but survival there is never included in the ‘attractive’ package (Luke 15:13).

Jonah not only found a ship, “he paid the fare thereof.”  When God sends you, He pays the fares.  When you send yourself, you pay, and the cost is never cheap.  The fare may be easy and cheap, but the ultimate cost of the journey could be very high: unexpected losses, sudden and unreasonable storms, stigmatisation by other passengers, the trauma of being a bringer of woes, then the mid-sea fiasco, which leaves you neither where you left from nor where you are headed.

From The Preacher’s diary,

December 10, 2025.