Time stood still. It dissolved.
Deep within the abyss, Jonah ceased to measure life in hours or regular heartbeats.
Everything became a confused succession of labored breaths, spasms of the giant body that
contained him, and thoughts that came and went like internal waves. If someone had asked
him how long he had been there, he wouldn't have known how to answer. Three days, they
would say later. For Jonah, they were an eternity without a name.
The air grew thick at times, almost unbreathable. At other times, an unexpected
current seemed to refresh it, as if the creature were briefly surfacing before
submerging again. Each change in pressure was a warning: its life did not belong
to it.
His body began to take its toll.
The cold alternated with a suffocating heat. His muscles contracted without warning. His
stomach, empty and churning, made him constantly nauseous. His skin burned where the
acidic liquid had touched it. The pain was no longer a clear enemy; it was a constant
companion, a silent presence.
Jonah learned to stay still.
Every unnecessary movement drained his strength. He huddled against a soft wall,
breathing slowly, mentally counting to avoid losing consciousness. Sometimes the
creature's heartbeat quickened and everything trembled. Other times, it slowed so
much that Jonas feared that heart would stop… and with it, his own life.
"If he dies... I die," he thought.
That absolute dependence broke him more than the initial fear.He had never been so helpless. He had never had so little control. And yet, in the
midst of that extreme fragility, something unexpected began to happen: his mind
became clear.
Without distractions, without tasks, without any possible escape, Jonas began to see his life with
ruthless honesty. Every memory arrived without embellishment, without justifications.
He saw his first steps as a prophet, the thrill of being heard, the respect of the people.
He saw how, little by little, he had confused the calling with identity, the mission with
personal worth.
"I liked being needed," he admitted silently. "I liked being right."
He recalled the times he had spoken about the trial firmly, even harshly, and how
that had given him a secret sense of power. The power to point fingers, to divide,
to decide who was in and who was out.
"I never meant to be merciful," he thought. "I meant to be right."
His stomach trembled again, as if the creature were responding to his confession. Jonah
gritted his teeth and waited for the spasm to pass. When everything calmed down, a
certainty settled within him:
God wasn't punishing him with silence.
He was teaching him to listen.
For the first time since he fled, Jonah stopped speaking. He didn't pray with words. He didn't ask
for anything. He simply remained attentive, vulnerable, open to whatever arose from the depths of
his being.
And what emerged was fear.
Not the fear of dying, but a deeper one: the fear of change.
—If I leave here—he thought—, I will never be the same again.
She understood that obedience didn't just mean going to Nineveh. It meant allowing God to
touch the place where she had kept her hatred, her pride, her unhealed pain.
"I would rather die," he admitted, "than forgive."
The revelation left him breathless.A new memory surfaced: the face of an Assyrian child, imagined yet real in his mind.
Not a soldier, not an executioner, but a child. Someone who hadn't chosen to be born
in Nineveh. Someone who, like him, had learned stories of hatred.
"Do I condemn him too?" he wondered. "Does he also deserve to disappear?"
His heart contracted.
For years, he had spoken of God's love as an absolute truth, but he had confined
it to invisible boundaries. Now, trapped in the womb of a creature created by that
same God, he understood the contradiction.
"Your mercy is not like mine," he whispered. "Thanks to that, I'm still alive."
The passage of time grew even stranger. At times, Jonah would fall into a kind of
restless sleep, filled with fragmented images: deserts, immense walls, a plant
growing under a relentless sun. He would wake with a start, unsure whether he had
slept for minutes or eternities.
In one of those waking moments, an idea struck him forcefully:
It hadn't been swallowed to hide. It had
been stored away.
The creature hadn't destroyed him. It hadn't torn him to pieces. It had carried him along, protecting him
from the sea that would have killed him without hesitation. This was neither an accident nor a blind
punishment.
It was a provision.
Jonah let out a weak, almost hysterical laugh.
"Who am I that you should do this?" he murmured. "Who am I that you should chase me to
the abyss?"
The belly moved again, this time in a different direction. Jonah felt the pressure
gradually change, how the movement was no longer a continuous descent. Something
was happening.
His heart began to beat strongly.
"Is it now?" he thought. "Or is this just another deception of my hope?"The fear returned, mingled with a trembling anticipation. What if he got out? What if he
really had to go to Nineveh? What if God not only saved him, but insisted on using him?
Jonah closed his eyes and, for the first time, did not resist the idea.
"Salvation comes from you," he said aloud, with newfound conviction. "Not from my perfect
obedience. Not from my righteousness. From you."
The words echoed faintly in the darkness, but something in the atmosphere shifted. The air
seemed to move more forcefully. The creature's heartbeat quickened. A powerful surge
coursed through its belly.
Jonah was swept away by an inner current, slammed against the soft walls. He clung on
for dear life, his heart pounding. The movement became violent, purposeful, as if the
creature itself were responding to a higher command.
"Wait!" he shouted, not knowing why. "Wait!"
But there was no going back.
An intense pressure pushed him forward. The air became almost nonexistent. Jonah
felt like he was going to lose consciousness. His body was propelled with brutal force
into a narrow, slippery passage.
The world turned.
There was a moment of absolute silence.
And then, light.
Not a soft light, but a blinding blast that pierced his closed eyes. Cold air hit his
face. His body was violently expelled, flung out of the creature and thrown onto
a hard surface.
Jonah rolled on the sand, gasping, coughing, vomiting. The acidic taste burned
his throat. His whole body ached, as if it had been beaten to a pulp.
He opened his eyes with difficulty.
The sky was clear. The
sun shone high.
The sea, a few meters away, seemed strangely calm.The creature emerged briefly, enormous, majestic, and then disappeared into
the depths without a sound, as if it had never been there.
Jonah lay there, trembling, covered in seaweed and salty debris. He took one, two,
three deep breaths. The air filled his lungs like a miracle.
He was alive.
Not luckily.
Not because of merit.
Out of mercy.
He sat up slowly, his body still weak, and gazed at the horizon. He didn't know where he was,
but he knew one thing with absolute certainty:
He had emerged from the belly of the abyss…
but the real journey was just beginning.
And this time, I wouldn't run away