6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”

Sort of a funny thing to hear when you first wake up. I imagine most of us can remember hearing one of our parents jolt us awake from a deep slumber. But I think it went more like "Get up and get ready for school!" Or maybe if we were napping on the couch we would have heard "Get up and do your chores!" I can honestly say, that even though I grew up in a Christian family, I was never awoken from a deep sleep and told to call on God. 

It's ironic to me that a pagan sea captain's instinct was to have Jonah call on the God of Israel. But desperate times call for desperate measures. And this was one desperate captain. He was willing to take any kind of help from whatever god/God was paying attention. And he seemed quite upset that Jonah was sleeping instead of calling on God. In fact, he seemed quite surprised that Jonah was not already calling on God. But that was the one thing that Jonah did not want to do. So interesting that God was using a pagan sea captain to get the attention of one His servants.

May we not be like Jonah. May we get up and call on our God daily. May we not wait until our situations are so desperate that the non-believers around us question our lack of prayer. Our families, communities, and nations need us to.