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This is part one of four on a series on the book of Jonah. In this first chapter Jonah is called to head east to the city of Ninevah, but instead of going east he flees from God and goes west to Tarshish. When God calls us, He often asks us to come closer to Him, and we run the other way. Why do we do this? As we'll see, in trying to save ourselves we often lose more than we had imagined.

On the most internal level, the stories of Abraham tell us about the Lord's development, with Abraham representing the Lord's spiritual aspects, the growth and change going on in the highest parts of His mind. Lot, meanwhile, represents the Lord's body and the sensations, delights and thoughts. There is nothing inherently wrong with bodily sensations and pleasures, as long as they are focused on good and are guided and controlled by the higher parts of our minds. And Lot represented good things as long as he was with Abraham and led by Abraham. But physical pleasures can lure us away from what is good if we're not careful, and Lot got in trouble after he left Abraham for the well-watered plains of the Jordan and the pleasure-seeking cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

In Sodom, Lot's meaning is somewhat different. There he represents the remnants of mankind's second great church, known as the Ancient Church. The church had fallen into evil and idolatry, but a few remained who had a desire to be good, even though their worship had become ritual, external, and filled with falsities. The Lord preserved these in the destruction of that church, even as he preserved Lot from the destruction of Sodom.