The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take note of us, and we will not perish (Jonah 1:6).

It’s kind of embarrassing when the pagan does it better than you do. This captain doesn’t know the One True God. He doesn’t understand His power, or His love, or His mercy. His experience of gods (or what he calls “gods”) is that they are fickle and unreliable.

But he knows that this is not the time to sleep. 

This is the time to act.

And he knows that this storm is beyond his power to survive without help.

This makes me think of a Keith Green song from back in the day. It is called “Asleep in the Light,” and some of the lyrics go like this:

Do you see, do you see all the people sinking down.

Don’t you care, don’t you care, are you going to let them drown?

God’s calling, and you’re the one, but like Jonah you run…

The world is sleeping in the dark that the Church just can’t fight

‘Cause it’s asleep in the light.

How can you sleep, Beloved? Get up and call on your God.

Happy Friday