Compassion (or, The Book of Jonah) Part Three

"Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time; 'Go to the great city of Ninevah and proclaim to it the message that I give you.' Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Ninevah. Now Ninevah was a very important city--a visit required three days. On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: 'Forty more days and Ninevah wil be overturned.' The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least put on a sack cloth.

When the news reached the king of Ninevah, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with a sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclamation in Ninevah:

'By the decree of the king and his nobles:

Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.'

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened."

--Jonah 3


Funny thing, how God works. When I first read through this chapter, I thought, "Man, I don't think I'm getting anything out of this. Maybe I should just combine three and four..." and then wham! there was suddenly a ton of stuff for me to focus on. Thanks, God. Guess I'm not going to bed early after all. lol. I'll take time with Him over sleep though. (You should realize that means He's of humungo importance. Nothing wins over sleep. NOTHING. haha). Anyways...

A few things that stuck out to me in this passage...

I like that God repeated His message to Jonah. I think if I had been Jonah, I probably would have remembered the whole reason I was sitting on the beach covered in fish vomit, but hey, maybe Jonah had something else on his mind that day. At any rate, God repeated His message to Jonah. "Hey! This is what I've been trying to tell you all along! You made this way harder on yourself than it needed to be." I think we do that a lot. We fight God, we run away, or we just plain ignore Him. And next thing we know, He's repeating a message to us that He's been whispering all along. And even though we're sure it does in fact sound familiar, all of a sudden it's crystal clear. It 's like fixing your antenna on your TV (oh yes, old school. I went there) to get better reception for the picture. When we tune in to God and adjust where our "rabbit ears" are pointing, the message is going to be that much clearer. All of a sudden you aren't getting the fuzzy Spanish channel with the sketchy talk show and mariachi music, you're getting the perfectly clear version of Friends. When we change the way we think, the way we tune in, we are going to be flooded with messages, with the good picture. Trevor compared it to checking your inbox after ignoring it for a long time. I like that. I think it's a very true description as well.

The second thing that stood out: Jonah went out, he preached and then came the powerful words of: The Ninevites believed GOD. They believed GOD, NOT JONAH. I think those might be four of the most important words in the entire book. The people didn't believe the man standing before them and preaching hell fire and damnation (we all know from experience that doesn't go over so well. People generally HATE being preached to like that. Something touched them deep within their hearts, their souls, to speak to them on a different level, a God level, and not the level of man. That's powerful. They felt something in their hearts and souls, and immediately they changed their ways. More conviction for me. A whole city changed it's "wicked" ways, sitting in despair in the dust and wearing only a sackcloth and fasting....but what do I, a semi-"godly" person do when I realize that I have sinned? Do I lament, bury myself in the dust, fast and beg for compassion? No, not even close. Yes, I have been forgiven, I have new life in Christ, and I no longer have to live in the pain of the past, but I should never take that for granted. Yet, I do. Almost every time I do. So why is a nation of sinners totally showing me up? No, it isn't a contest, but I feel like I should be feeling something other than bland knowledge that my sins have been forgiven. With new life in Christ I am released from having to feel guilt, having to feel shame when I know that I have been forgiven, that forgiveness is readily available, but I should never let that knowledge blunt the true cost behind the reason for it. Every time I realize that I am forgiven, I should treat it like a celebration, a new lease on life, but instead I do nothing? Something is off in my own spiritual walk.

Ninevah repented. They "turned from their evil ways." They turned with no guarantee that they would be saved, no promise that the Lord would take compassion. The king even treats it like a gamble. "Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn away his fierce anger so that we will not perish." And I wonder, what would we do if the same situation happened to our society today? And in my mind I see more of a Dorian Gray moment occurring, and not a Ninevah one. If you knew that in forty days you were to be destroyed, how would you react? Would you "waste" time by being pensive, repentant, grave, forgoing food and all forms of comfort, or would you be out in Vegas, living it up, partaking in any and every sin you could possibly find since you were past the point of no return? Hm...

An interesting thought came to me as I was reading the third chapter. It's not quite a parallel to this, because a parallel is two similar things on different planes. This is more of a...perpendicular thing. I know, I'm busting out geometry terms, but that's just the image I got when this occurred to me. Two very similar things that took a complete turn from each other. I am thinking about the story of the cities of of Sodom and Gomorrah. The story starts out really similar. God gives Abraham a similar opportunity to go and find any righteous people among the two cities so that they will not be destroyed. First of all, Abraham bargains with God to get the number of righteous people he finds down to the lowest acceptable number possible (kind of an amusing passage. My favorite is after Abraham and God have basically shaken hands on the deal, Abraham pipes up again, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more..." Gen. 18:32a) Bold move, Abraham. You did realize you were bargaining with God, right? Man, is that human nature for you. Even facing God, Abraham is still trying to get a good deal. I'm getting distracted. The thing that totally just hit me was how similar the stories were, yet how completely different they ended. We all know that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed with "burning sulfur" (true story, historically it checks out as well as biblically. Archeologists have found both of those cities, both of whom were destroyed with burning sulfur...from a volcano? Interesting. Gotta love how archeologists actually use the Scriptures to find and cross check information and locations), but Ninevah changed. Not just one or two people saved the city, the entire population changed. They sought after compassion, they sought any favor possible to be had in the Lord's eyes.

Which brings me to my final point: We have an amazing God of compassion and love. Despite everything that had happened, He was willing to have compassion on a people who had been engaging the worst of the worst. He never wanted to destroy Ninevah. He doesn't delight in the destruction of people. In fact, it pains Him. He doesn't force us to follow Him out of a sadistic power struggle. He wants our fellowship, our time, our love in return. He has bountiful compassion and love. All we have to do is claim it. We have to believe GOD, not the mere men of this earth, who, although play an important part in our lives, cannot compare to what God is and was and will forever be, to what He has in store for our lives. And I, for one, am glad my future lies in His omniscient, omnipresent hands, and not in the hands of a flawed man, in my own very broken, very flawed plans.

So, God is good, He is compassionate, and He definitely sees us and hears our cries. Amazing love. =)