Can This Bird Sing In Any Cage?

It's a bizarre little question, but I ask it anyway. Can this bird sing in any cage?

Jonah sets the bar high.

Jonah 2:9
"But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise,
and I will fulfill all my vows.
For my salvation comes from the Lord alone."

Did Jonah unleash these words of praise from a dry beach? After his miraculous escape from certain death?

No.

Jonah sang these words while he was still deep below the surface of the sea, stuck in the stinking belly of a great fish. He sang these words in the dark.

It is in the following verse that we read of Jonah's release. "Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach."

A lesson for me? I think so. It goes like this: It is impossible to praise God during times of trial if I insist on waiting for the trials to pass before I start to sing. It's a tautological truth — a no-duh sort of thing. And yet I seem still not to have learned it.

Jonah worked this out. He learned to sing before he knew the ending of his story. Perhaps this was one of the lessons God wanted to teach Johah.

It is easy for us to expect Jonah to sing. We know his story. When he does bring forth his song of praise, we easily gloss over the circumstances in which he did so — because we already know how his story ends.

My story, however, is not done yet, and I don't know the ending. Can I sing anyway? Now? Suddenly the task seems not so simple.

As I discussed in an earlier blog, I am in possession of what I'll refer to here as my Financial Tar Baby. FTB, for short. I didn't ask for my FTB, but in own folly I sunk a foot deep into it. It wasn't take long before both of my feet were cemented in. Then both my hands.

My little FTB could teach a few tricks to the famous Tar Baby that Brer Rabbit tussled with. Along with Brer Rabbit, I have struggled mightily to escape my FTB. In the process I have lost a lot of time and a great deal of money, but the harder I try to break free, the more amazing the circumstances which arise necessitating yet another day with that little FTB still in my care.

The Brer Rabbit video in the hyperlink (provided above) pretty well captures exactly how I feel. It's only 3 minutes long, so I just watched the whole thing. At the end of it, the clip fades out with Brer Rabbit completely stuck in a puddle of tar in the middle of the road. Two predators gleefully dance around the miserable rabbit.

As if to rub salt in my wound, the narrator's parting words regarding Brer Rabbit go as follows:

"Poor little critter. He learned a powerful lesson, but he learned it too late. But it just goes to show you what comes of mixin' up with somethin' you've got no business with in the first place."

Ouch. Boy, can I relate! My folly got me into this mess. And how. But is my situation really the same? Exactly? To the point, did I really learn this lesson a little too late? If so, then God's timing is off, and I have no reason to sing.

But God is sovereign, and I am still alive. It is not too late. God's good plans for me are still unfolding. Jonah may be sitting in the belly of a fish. I may be sitting on an FTB. No matter! I can still trust in my God and rest in the knowledge that God wasn't too late with Jonah and he won't be too late for me either.

Jonah needed a bit (a lot?) of refining. Sometimes the belly of a stinking fish is a good place for that kind of work. Maybe it's what I need too. If all this is true, then what I need is Holy Patience. I need to learn to Wait.

While I am waiting, there are useful things I can do. For starters, I can thank God for what he is teaching me through all this. But why stop there? Perhaps I should, along with Jonah, even try singing just a little bit.

Even in this cage.