Friday, August 31: Jonah 4 - God's compassion.

The contrast between Jonah’s anger and God’s compassion is obvious in this chapter. Jonah is angry because he knew God would be compassionate on Nineveh and relent. He just knew. I tried to step into Jonah’s anger. He has been taken from his home, had to travel to an enemy city and preach the coming of God’s wrath only to watch the city repent and be spared. Jonah must have looked like a fool. And so he was angry at all he had to do… angry that his enemy is spared… angry that what he had to preach didn’t happen!

Stepping into God’s position, God sends one person to preach a message of doom, the recipients of the message repent and so they are spared. 120,000 people experience a revival and God is praised… and compassion flows.

I thought, I (we) can be so myopic, so self-centered that we see all of live through the lens of our singular life. God wants to reach people so they know His name and praise Him, yet we don’t want to be bothered or inconvenienced to spread the News.

It is as if Jonah wanted to see them die rather than repent!

Oh, God, am I like that??? Would I rather have people die in their sins, at enmity with You, Oh Lord, than be inconvenienced to speak the Good News of Jesus to and with them.

Oh, Lord, forgive the hard-heartedness of my life and soften my heart with the compassion of Jesus, Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6-8)

Through Jesus, I pray. Amen.