Jonah is, to me, a kindred spirit. If Jonah and I went to high school together, we would have been friends. The book of Jonah is an origins story, a record of the events that turned Jonah from a young man focused on himself to a servant of God focused on others. We tend to compare him critically to the likes of Moses or Elijah, but we forget that the stories that make these men great came later in their lives after they had their own Jonah events. The story of Jonah is the story before he became a man, before he became a prophet of God. (more…)