I had a rare opportunity this week to turn my sermon into a shorter devotional.  It only deals with the text from Jonah, but I think it captures the gist of what we discussed Sunday morning.

Here it is and tell me what you think:

Is there anything better than driving down the highway, someone comes flying past you and then about a mile down the road you see them pulled over?  Man, that’s just the best. Never mind that when I got on the interstate, I zoomed past some other slowpoke so fast, I think the pin stripes came off the side of their car.

We want people to get their just desserts, but we certainly expect a bit more grace when it’s us who is doing the thing we hate.   I guess it’s also kinda like picking on a sibling.  It’s okay if we do it, but nobody else better say a word.

We all know Jonah wound up in the belly of a fish, but do we remember it’s because he didn’t want to do what God asked him to do?

So, what was this hated task?  That would be to go to the Assyrians in Nineveh and tell those people who had been such a terrible enemy of the Israelites that they were wicked people and that God would punish them.  You see, only the first part was the hated part, the part where he actually goes to his enemy.  We gather from the rest of the book of Jonah that he wasn’t too keen on the people being warned either.  Then God makes matters worse: After the Assyrians respond with repentance, God relents, he gives grace and the Assyrians are not destroyed.  

Jonah wanted his prophecy to come true, that in 40-days the city would be completely destroyed, and the Assyrians would be gone.   

Instead, we got one of those…I knew it.  This is why I never wanted to come here…I knew you were gracious, I knew you had mercy and I knew your steadfast love wouldn’t allow you to kill all these people. For Jonah it must have been the equivalent of going to a big fireworks show, but everything they shot off was a dud.  

Jonah is angry because these people he warned, headed the warning and were saved.  Modern translations of the Bible do us a major disservice when we read the line “is it right for you to be angry?”  When Robert Young set out to translate the Bible as literally as he could, he translated God’s question, “Is doing good displeasing to you?”  

We never get Jonah’s answer, but we know the answer was “yes,” it made him angry to have been the bringer of a good warning and even more angry that the warning had been headed and the people spared.  He did not want to see mercy so freely given.

The same guy who literally ran away from God and instead of being struck dead, spent a very unusual three days in a fish.  He was extended mercy.  He was blessed to be a blessing to the Assyrians, but instead of rejoicing at their repentance and all those lives saved, he went and sulked on a hill.

It is here that we must ask ourselves some difficult questions: When have we tried limiting God’s mercy to others?  Is there someone God wants us to show mercy to, but we’d rather go sit on a hill hoping that they get the opposite?
 

We are challenged every day to show the love, grace and mercy to others that God has extended to us.  God bless each of you this week as we do our best to be a blessing to one another.