It’s a miracle any of us are alive today. It is amazing that someone out there cares enough to love me even with all my bumps, bruses and backwards ideas about life. And yet He still does, unending. As I was reading through Jonah last night the story cemented in me the reality of God of the New Testament. As he had sent His Son to slaughter at the hands of his creation, he knew the old ways of relating with that very thing he put together was about to change. He knew the days of sacrifices and burning alters were going the way of Ceaser.
After being seperated from God by a giant curtain for so long, the Wizard of Oz-esque experience was about to be blown wide open. And said event did occur as the giant curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom as if God ripped the barriers himself.
Jonah’s experience with God gives us a peek into the softer side of The Lord. Jonah was a prophet. He had probably condemned and saved many. Perhaps there was a small part of him that would have delighted in seeing the fire from the sky consume Ninavah in the night light. I mean, who isn’t up for some destruction o’ heathens? Well, as we learn, God isn’t this time around. The people of this backwards city (God even calls it pretty basically ‘They don’t know thier left hand from their right…srsly Jonah they’re backwards!’) repent in totality, shocking Jonah and the reader.
The first time I ever read this story I was a little unnerved myself. I was expecting the swords to come out and Jonah to be strung up, slashed, dashed and dead in short order. Instead it was like a Billy Graham revival on speed. They couldn’t repent fast enough. Wham, bam thank you Son of God!
Second chances. This theme runs rampant (widly even) throughout the Holy Bible. And in Jonah it is forced down a naive prophets throat until he is left to stare at a city, the pieces of his God finally nearly just about coming together. I don’t know what happened to Jonah after this but I can only hope he realized what he had just witnessed.
A people marked for doom had done what God had asked and left their wickedness behind. And in turn He had spared and saved them. What kind of a God does that? Surely he must have had the carpet bombing fire and brimestone on standby? Perhaps. But more than likely he knew they would see His Truth. Was this an entire lesson simply to prove to Jonah more than the obvious? I can’t even begin to surmise…but I can figure that God has a plan in everything He does.
And this one is fascinating to read and observe.
I can only imagine how it was for Jonah. Hear that God? I don’t want to personally be vomited out of a whale.
