Deep Calls Glory

Some weeks feel heavier than others. A sense that life presses harder than we expected. A fear that we are not as faithful as we wish. Or a longing for God to break in with mercy again. Scripture gives us voices that rise from these places. Jonah crying from the deep. Stephen crying as stones fall. Two prayers. Two hearts. Both reaching for the God who hears.

Jonah’s prayer in Jonah 2.1–10 reads like a psalm stitched together from memory. The prophet who fled now sinks in judgment. The waters close around him. Seaweed wraps his head. His language reaches back to the temple, to past rescue, to vows once made. It is a prayer shaped by desperation and the old story of God’s steadfast love. He knows he has run. He knows he cannot save himself. So he speaks from the belly of the fish, asking for a rescue he does not deserve. Even here, he remembers that salvation belongs to the Lord.

Stephen’s final words in Acts 7 rise from a different place. Not rebellion but faithfulness. He stands before the council, tracing Israel’s story from Abraham to Moses to the prophets. He shows how God meets His people in places not built by human hands. How the Holy One is never bound to our structures or our expectations. How the Righteous One has come. His speech cuts open the old wound of Israel’s resistance to God’s messengers. Then the stones fly.

What happens in those last moments echoes Psalm 31. Stephen’s prayer rises from the same words Jesus used on the cross. Psalm 31.5 had long served as a prayer of trust for Israel. Into your hand I commit my spirit. Jesus made those words His own in Luke 23.46. Stephen follows the same pattern, but he directs the prayer to the risen Christ. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Later Jewish practice shows that Psalm 31.5 became part of evening devotion for families and children. That tradition grows out of the psalm’s long use as a simple act of entrusting one’s life to God. Stephen stands inside that stream of trust, but he now sees the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. His final words carry the psalm’s faith and the gospel’s vision.

The two stories sit far apart in time. A reluctant prophet in the dark. A faithful disciple in the light of a vision. Yet they echo each other. Jonah goes down into the deep, then cries upward toward the temple. Stephen looks up and sees the true temple, the risen Christ. Jonah pleads from a place of self-inflicted trouble. Stephen pleads from a place of obedience. Jonah prays for his own life. Stephen prays for the lives of his killers.

In both cases, God remains the same. The One who hears from the depths and the One who hears from the stones. The One who rescues the runaway and the One who receives the martyr. The One who shows mercy to the broken and who strengthens the faithful. The God who saves not by human promise but by His own steadfast love.

You can hear faint echoes connecting them. Jesus speaks of Jonah as a sign of His own burial and rising. Three days in the deep. New life given. Stephen sees that risen Christ in glory, echoing Daniel’s Son of Man who receives a kingdom that cannot be shaken. The story runs from the fish’s belly to the temple mount to the right hand of God. It carries the same truth. Death is no final word for those held by the living God.

And in both prayers, we hear the disorder in our own hearts. Some of us pray like Jonah, half-awake to grace, wanting rescue while wrestling with the pride that still clings to our bones. Some of us pray like Stephen, steady but afraid, wanting courage to stand in a world that grinds against the gospel. Most of us live somewhere between the two. Running and returning. Fearing and trusting.

Christ meets us in both places. He is the greater Jonah who went down into death and rose again. He is the risen Lord who stood to receive Stephen. He is the One who still hears from the depths and still answers with mercy. He is the One who shapes people who can pray for their enemies because they know the mercy shown to them.

If you carry fear this week, let Jonah speak for you. If you feel worn thin by pressure or sorrow, let Stephen lend you his view of Christ. Either way, lift your voice. The same God hears both prayers. And He draws you toward a life marked by trust, courage, and joy in the One who went into the deep and rose in glory.

Let your prayer this week be simple. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Make me more like You.

~PW 🌮🛶