February 24
God Shows Mercy to Nineveh
Jonah 3,4
KEY VERSE: You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and
abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.
-- Jonah 4:2
Jonah was a lot like you and me. He sometimes thought he was sometimes
smarter than God. He was often stubborn. He was confused at times, though at
other times he had splendid insights about the nature of God. He was more
concerned about himself that he was the mission of God. He had poor vision in
that he was unable to see the big picture -- that God loves everyone.
How wrong Jonah was to think that the people of Nineveh were worthless and
not worthy of his time or the love of God! For a time he resisted the wisdom of
God. We have all done the same. We may have had racial attitudes that we are
now embarrassed to remember, times when we thought other races of people were
inferior to our own. And we praise God for his patience with us when we
indulged ourselves in racist feelings.
Stubborn? Oh yes! At least that describes me at many times in my journey.
But like Jonah, when I have swallowed my pride, I have found great delight in
doing what God said do. Have you not found it so?
Confused? Of course. None of us can see into the future exactly what God has
planned. But at times he gives us glimpses of truth and understanding, much
like he gave Jonah when the prophet was able to see that God is "gracious
and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love." Only grace gave
the prophet such an insight!
Self-centered? Yes, too often my concerns are for myself rather than the
mission of God. What brings us back to center in on God is to remember the Cross.
When we focus on the suffering of our Lord, we quickly realize how puny our own
problems are.
A sad aspect of Jonah’s story is its ending. The final thing we see him
doing illustrates clearly his humanity: he went out and sat down! Somehow he
was unable to enjoy the great citywide revival God started through his
preaching. The lesson may be this: that God uses real people, not super
heroes with no flaws. Simply put, God will use ordinary people, warts and all,
when they are willing to obey him. Should you and I not pray, "Lord, let
me be one person you can use!"