Thoughts for another day

August 12, 2008

Today's verse: Jonah 4:11. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; (KJV)
(Pls. read the above before you read further. Thanks)

The book of Jonah, more than anything else, is a metaphor on Jesus’ burial in the belly of the earth for three days - a similitude to Jonah in the belly of the fish for a similar period. Other than that, a few truths are seen in the Book making eminent reading particularly, the re-direction of the truant prophet to the task on hand, signifying no escape from the office God gives us, apart from His salvation and mercy.

Our verse today, reflects God’s understanding and the boundless mercy He shows when people repent. A reading of Jonah reveals that Jonah is first of all led to the path God wants him on, albeit via an unusual route. Upon Jonah doing that, prophesying the doom of Nineveh, we see the people, even the king, repent and humble themselves. Exactly what God had sent him for. Because of this God relents and does not send the threatened destruction. But, rather than be pleased, Jonah is upset that the prophecy he had proclaimed against Nineveh will not be carried out. In the depth of self-pity, he feels done in and insulted by God before the Ninevehites, so much so that he pleads death. And then through another experience, God drives home to him, the point that He, being God, needs to be compassionate to His people while saying that the people don’t even know their left hand from their right!

This message is for us too. In our self-righteousness, we decree punishment for others from God. God says vengeance is mine (Deut. 32:35), but we demand it of God and that too in the way we think it should be. We feel God, who knows all, is denying us ‘justice’ as we call it, but that isn’t the case. Rather it is the sublime display of God’s mercy. If we were to think a little deeper, we would understand the meaning of mercy. If God, despite all my sins is merciful to me, shouldn’t I also be merciful to others?

The saga of God’s mercy is filled with the unthinkable in the myriad ways it touches us, even in the loathsome pit we’re in, as David cries out in Ps. 40 ending with, ‘But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinks of me…’, so as to seem unreal, yet is more real than reality itself. Which is why He’s God and the reason, across the world, people are willing to lay down their lives for Him, as I am sure you and I, are.