Jonah 2:4

At the lowest point Jonah voices his despair: I am cast out of thy sight. He feels banished from God's presence, the very presence he had earlier tried to flee. But despair does not have the last word. With a decisive yet, he turns his face toward God's holy temple, the place where heaven and earth met and where prayer was directed. Hope reasserts itself in the act of looking.

This is the turn that faith makes in the dark. Even when feelings say we are abandoned, faith chooses to look again toward God. Jonah cannot see the temple from the belly of the fish, but he orients his heart toward the place of God's presence and mercy. Looking toward the temple is, in the end, looking toward the One who dwells there. When we are tempted to believe we are beyond God's notice, the path back begins with this same stubborn turning of the soul toward Him who has not, in fact, let us go.