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Dear Reader,
Let’s see
now …God is on a mission … Nineveh’s time is up … time for judgment … BUT
…God will give the people of Nineveh a second chance … because of
200 000 infants and animals. Well that is my thought after trying to
picture this story but I know God loves all his creation and he also sees the
people; tortured by the situation in the city. Innocent people are hurting
where evilness is governing society.
And here is
where God has chosen Jonah as the tool for this second chance. Or … is it
Nineveh’s 40th second chance? So the Boss summons his crew …
Jonah … and Jonah gets mad and runs out of the office and takes a trip to
Tarshish instead of following instructions; because, as he later confesses, he
knows God to be a just and merciful God. Now that is a strange way to
react to God’s mercy isn’t it? What is bothering Jonah?
Now picture
your “pain- in- the- ass-person” (well I guess there are other expressions for
this but I want you to wake up) that you must live/work/meet with every day and
God tells you that he will let this person win the million dollar lottery and
he expects you to be happy about it.
He also wants you to bless
this person every day and your prayer should be “Bless , protect and save
this person and Holy Spirit reveal Jesus to this man/woman and
save, heal and restore him/her into a new life in Christ” How ready
and happy are you to take on that task? Jesus told me and you to bless
the enemy and the only way to be able to do that is to be obedient to God no
matter how we feel about it. I know I have run away like Jonah when the subject
of co-workers or relatives comes up. So don’t throw a stone at Jonah –
you might get hit yourself.
The merciful
and just God doesn’t dismiss Jonah from his task but is determined to bring him
into the original plan. What would be more natural than stirring up a
raging storm to get Jonah in the mood to obey God?
It usually turns that way, when we disobey God; a storm of conflicting thoughts will rage
inside until we decide to face the truth; that God is always right.
Somehow the
story of Jonah have been shown like a cartoon or fairytale because of that “big
fish” and Jonah living in that fish for three days and three nights and this is
what I love about God;
that he
takes the impossible and tells us “I can make it happen and nothing is
impossible for me”
Jesus took
the story serious and used it as a lesson for a stubborn audience that
dismissed him as the Messiah so I think we are in good company if we treat this
story with respect and a lesson in our own lives.
And it all
ended well?
Not a happy
ending for Jonah as it seems because he obviously had a change of heart again
after preaching repentance – and the people actually repented. He seemed
to have hoped for fire and brmstone over the city but when God proofs to be a
just and merciful God Jonah is very disappointed. Unfair! That’s the word Jonah
might have used in his self-absorbed mood.
Grude and
envy, bitterness and self-pity are like the worm that consumed the sheltering
bush over Jonah’s head and the blessing Jonah could have experienced through
God’s mercy towards Nineveh became like “sour grapes” for him.
Compared to
God’s pity over Nineveh and Jonah’s pity over the bush; Jonah’s complaint looks
ridiculous. And so we are left with a “cliff-hanger” We don’t know what
happened to Jonah after his last conversation with God in this story but we know that God’s mercy still works and has been working
time after time in history and hopefully Jonah could in the end be content with that..
Well ... off
to Micah …
Sincerely
yours, Ida
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