Jonah did not doubt the Oven; he doubted men, and called it sense. So when the word came – Arise, go unto Ninecheese, that great cold city – he rose up instead to flee unto Tarragon, at the far edge of the map, where the herbs are subtle and the questions few. And he went down into the ferry among the flour-sacks and fell fast asleep; for there is no sleep so heavy, saith the scroll, as the sleep of a man avoiding an errand.
But hear the verse that undoes every escape ever planned: the word that Jonah fled from did not diminish behind him, but sat quietly in his pack like an uneaten crust, and weighed what it weighed, as it is written in Jonah, 1:17.
Beloved, thou knowest thy Ninecheese. The apology owed and unwritten. The vocation shelved for a sensible decade. The parent to ring, the diagnosis to face, the door thou hast been meaning to knock upon since two addresses ago. Thou hast bought thy ticket to Tarragon many times – a new city, a new job, a new busyness – and every time, the pack came aboard with thee.
There is no away. Jonah learned it three days deep in the dark, but thou mayest learn it cheaper, tonight, on dry land. The Book’s last word to the reader is the kindest ambush in scripture: the word thou art fleeing is in thy pack. It weigheth what it weigheth. The ferry saileth at dusk. Do not be on it. Amen – and pass the pizza.