JUNIOR KING’S BUSINESS
a big layer of fat called blubber. Sometimes this layer is a foot thick. This keeps him from get ting too cold in the water, because whales are warm-blooded animals. Now, actually, whales aren’t really fish even though they live in the water and most people think of them as fish. One reason that whales are different from fish is that they breathe with lungs, not gills. So before they go under water, they fill their big lungs with fresh air. Then they come back up again; they have to get rid of that stale air before they can take in fresh air. They do this by blowing it through a pair of nostrils called blow-holes. The stale air is warm from being inside the whale, so when this air comes spouting out of these blow holes it looks like steam as it hits cold air. It also looks like water spouting up. Many times it goes twenty feet high. Whalers cry, “ There she blows!” when they see this. If it was a blue whale that swallowed Jonah, God would have had a equip him with a special throat because an ordinary blue whale, though he is huge, still has a small throat. He doesn’t have much trouble eating, however, for all he does is open his big mouth as he swims along, and tons of water flow in and through two rows of whale bone with brush like bristles on the inner edges. This strains all the little animals from the water. He then pushes the water out of his mouth again and swallows the food. We don’t know exactly what that big fish was like that shal lowed Jonah, but I can imagine that Jonah was one mighty happy person to be out of him. It makes us realize, doesn’t it, that it is important to obey God? God knows what is best for us and it is only because of His love that He punishes us when we disobey. So obey God’s commandments; a happy life awaits those who do. Reprinted by permission from NATURE STORIES FOR CHIL DREN. Baker Book House.
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I n t h e B i b l e you will find one of the biggest fish stories ever told. It is about Jonah and the whale. You remember, Jonah was told by God to go to Nineveh to preach and warn the people there to repent of their wickedness. But instead, Jonah rebelled — just as some children do when Mother says, “ It’s time to turn the TV off and do your homework.” Rather than go where God told him to go, he got on a boat and sailed for Tarshish. You remem ber that after Jonah went to sleep, a big storm came up and the sailors were afraid they were all going to drown. So they chose names to find out who it was that had done something terrible and made this storm come up. The name turned out to be Jonah’s. After they had wakened Jonah, he confessed and told them to throw him overboard. The sailors were too soft-hearted to do this, but when they finally realized that it was either he or all of them, they threw him into the churn ing sea. What a sinking feeling Jonah must have had as he went under the water, especially when he saw what was waiting for him — the
wide-open mouth of probably the biggest fish he had ever seen. Now one place in the Bible it calls this fish a whale, but in another place it just says that God had pre pared for him a big fish. So what ever it was, God had put it right there just to receive Jonah. What an awful place that must have been, down inside this big fish: dark, slimy, wet, and stuffy. After a few days down there, Jonah felt very sorry that he had disobeyed and asked God to for give him. That was all God was waiting for. He caused the big fish to get sick and he threw Jonah up on the beach. Jonah must have cleaned himself off and rested and then hurried to obey God’s commandment. What kind of a big fish was this that swallowed Jonah? If it was a blue whale, it could certainly have been big enough, for they get to be over one hundred feet long. Just think, his head might be too big to get into your living room! Even a baby blue whale is much larger than an elephant. If this fish was a whale, Jonah must have been well-cushioned because whales are covered with
JULY, 1968
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