A Journey in Jonah

This week, I've been reading the small book of Jonah. It's one of those stories that you've maybe read a million times (or at least heard about a million times), but I read it with fresh eyes this week. Here's Jonah--this man on a mission from God. He's supposed to go bring a message to the people of Nineveh, but instead he thinks he can run away from the Lord. God sure gets his attention--he's cast off a ship for dead by his shipmates, and God has him swallowed in the belly of a large fish.

Jonah gets a major wake-up call:

"You hurled me into the deep,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirrled around me;
all your waves and breakers swept over me..." (Jonah 2:3)

"But you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple." (Jonah 2:7)

Jonah realizes "salvation comes from the Lord" (2:8) and that salvation goes for ALL people--all nationalities, all ethnicities, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.

So then Jonah's faithful to do what God sent him to do. He travels to the wicked city of Nineveh, full of idol worship and violence, and preaches God's messages. And the people respond!! They grieve their behavior, they turn from their wicked ways--even the king declares a revival! It seems that Nineveh (at least for the next 150 years my Bible says) turns from its wicked ways.

Shouldn't Jonah be overjoyed that the people have received God's message with such intensity and responded with such repentence??

Well, he's not. The Bible says Jonah was "greatly displeased and became angry" (Jonah 4:1). He even decides he'd rather die than see the Ninvevites live. And you think--how selfish!! But, have you ever prayed for someone living a very sinful life, and then they come to know the Lord and experience God's grace and compassion and blessings, and then you feel like, "Well they don't DESERVE that! Look how they've lived. I've never done anything like that...why does God forgive them? How can God forgive them?"

I'll be transparent--I have. In the rest of the book of Jonah, God teaches Jonah a lesson about how his grace and salvation is for ALL people who will accept him and repent, even the most sinful. How selfish of me to ever think or feel that not everyone deserves God's love and compassion! How am I any better than the next person? God says, ALL sin is the same.

In fact, God says,
"But where sin increased, grace increased all the more." (Romans 5:20).

It's reassuring though that no matter what you've done, God wipes out all sin--completely forgiving and forgetting it all--when you accept his salvation and turn from it. Lord, keep me humble enough to remember that your grace has saved me and I was and am a sinner--no better or worse than any murderer, thief, or felon.