I recently came to a stop at a red light and automatically reached for my phone. I’m pretty sure I do it all the time. It has become a reflex. I know I’m not the only one who suffers from this compulsion. Look around the next time you stop at a traffic light.

We are embarking on a journey that will take us through the great Old Testament book of Jonah. Why Jonah? Isn’t it just a weird story about a man being swallowed alive by a huge fish? I want you to catch this right up front: the whole theme of this short book is that God is pursuing you. It’s about sin and grace. Sin is all about us running from God. Grace is all about God pursuing undeserving sinners. Sin is running away from God, and grace is God chasing us down, hunting us down in love, and rescuing us from our self-destructive behavior.

I think one of the reasons we love the story of Jonah so much is not because it is a wild tale of a man being swallowed by a big fish, but because it illustrates the wild nature of God’s grace. You may have never thought of God’s grace in this way, but it is indeed wild. Grace is the most transformational concept in the Bible.