When Chocolate Won't Fix It

“In my distress I called on the Lord, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called help, and you listened to my cry” —Jonah 2:2, NIV.

A group of ladies from our church are into their second week of a study called, Made to Crave, Satisfying Your Deepest Desire With God, Not Food, written by Lysa TerKeurst. Last night’s session was titled From Desperation to Determination. As soon as I read the verse for this morning what we had looked at in this last session came to mind.

What is it that I do when I’m desperate? Jonah had the right idea. Obviously he couldn’t stuff himself with unhealthy food choices when his whole world collapsed around him. Seaweed might have been a healthy option, but a burger and fries, a big bag of chips or a chocolate bar didn’t appear on his radar. He learned the lesson of moving from whatever his desperate state was to a determined effort to seek God and dump the load on the only shoulders that could bear the weight.

Most of us carry a lot of weight around—and I’m not talking about poundage here, though that may be part of our reality. But we do bear burdens, concerns, worries, anxieties, sins, many of which we are totally helpless to do a whole lot about. Even when there are steps that we can take to deal with some situations, there often remain things connected with those situations that are out of our hands.

What do we do?

Jonah takes those unresolvable parts and lays them at God’s feet. There they do not remain for any longer than the Lord, in His wisdom, determines they should. In the perfect way, at the perfect moment, He sends the answer to the problem. For Jonah the ride was a bit rough, and it might be for us as well. But whatever the process might be, the eternal truth remains—in desperate moments, be determined to seek God. The answer is already on the way—and chocolate isn’t it!