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Love actuallyWednesday, February 20, 2013
Luke 11:29 God doesn't say much, but he does say something. "Jonah, are you right to be angry?" Jonah is silent for a time, while God grows a gourd plant overnight to keep him cool in his solitude. Jonah feels happy and content. But then the next night God sends a worm to eat the root, and the gourd withers. Jonah is angry again, "angry enough to die." Now the Lord has more to say. "How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can't I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure - this big city of more than 120,000 childlike people who don't yet know right from wrong? To say nothing of all the innocent animals." (from The Message) Jesus is often willing to sacrifice simple surface meaning in hopes that we will stretch down into something deeper. So what is Jesus telling the crowd, telling me? Maybe something like ... God is love, and abounds in kindness. He longs to forgive. So when he uses me to work those miracles in the lives of others, he doesn't want my "being right" to get in the way. This is confusing, and very humbling. It is the redeemed way of the prodigal son's older brother. In my confusion, though, it's a good time to get quiet, to go sit in the sand and see what God might say. As you forgave David for his adultery and his lying, Lord, as you forgave the Ninevites, as I think you forgave Jonah, so you forgive me and all of us "childlike people" who struggle in accepting your love. Thank you. |
Jonah is not a willing servant of the Lord. He resists his mission; then when his mission is successful by God's standards, he resists God and becomes suicidal. Because the Ninevites deserve destruction, he resents God's grace and mercy toward them.