When the prophet was thrown overboard and swallowed by a great fish, it looked like the end of his story. But Jonah 2 encourages us with a simple truth: when we hit bottom, we can still look up. No matter how low you have sunk, God’s grace is available to you. If you feel like you haven’t got a prayer, that means it’s time to pray. Wherever you are. Even if you’ve bottomed out. God did a spectacular work by keeping Jonah alive for three days inside the belly of the giant fish, but what He did inside Jonah was also impressive. In chapter 1, Jonah had no interest in praying. Now he’s earnestly calling out to God in his distress. Sometimes we too may have to sink for a while, perhaps hitting our lowest point, before we honestly turn to the LORD. We might spare ourselves some misery if we weren’t so stubborn. But God was there for Jonah when his situation had become desperate. It was as if Jonah had one foot in the grave when he prayed, but God heard and answered (v 1-2). Face to face with death, Jonah is finally ready to acknowledge that it’s God who is directing the circumstances of his life. “For You cast me into the deep… all Your waves and Your billows passed over me.” The sailors and the storm certainly had a part in this, but as Jonah sees it, those are minor technicalities. It was actually the LORD who threw him overboard, and it was the LORD’s waves that almost drowned Him! Virtually every line of his prayer is quoted from one of the Psalms. Jonah knew his Bible. And this helped him see that God was absolutely sovereign and his life was in God’s hands (v 3-4). As Jonah descends to the bottom of the Mediterranean, his head becomes hopelessly entangled with seaweed, and he feels like he is locked up behind bars, forever! Death has claimed him. Yet it was at this lowest point, when all hope was lost—when Jonah was entirely stripped of his self-sufficiency—that God intervened. The impossible happened! Things don’t necessarily change just because you’ve sunk to the bottom. Things change when you pray at the bottom. We never know how God is going to answer. Jonah may have rather seen the Coast Guard come to save him. Yet he knew the strange arrival of a giant fish meant his prayer had reached the presence of a holy God (v 5-7). Jonah wants us to learn from his experience. To replace God with any substitute is to cut ourselves off from our only real source of help. Thankfully, we can return to Him. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been running or how far you’ve run. No matter where you are sinking or how low you have sunk, there is hope for you—for “salvation belongs to the LORD” (v 8-10). For further meditation: