You may have guessed by now that the contemplative life is not my strong suit. I’m much more into action, much more into application. Maybe it is an attempt to burn off the years of sitting in a college library, reading endlessly. Maybe it is just that I belong to a generation that doesn’t do well with sitting still.

But I do try to fit the contemplative in. I usually read Scripture before I go to bed at night (although I’m trying to finish up Sirach, in the Apocryphal texts, and just can’t seem to make it. The guy goes on and on and on!), and once in a while I’ll read when I get into the office. This morning I opened the office Bible to the story of Jonah. Now I’ll bet most of you know at least a little bit about Jonah—he was the dude whom God saved by making a whale swallow him. Now, that in itself is a bit trippy… you’ve got to love Jonah 2:10, where basically the whale vomits Jonah out. God’s rescues can often be described as prosaic at best.

Probably most of us have forgotten, however, what happens to Jonah after his up close and personal experience with a whale’s digestive system. He heads off to Ninevah, tells the people to repent, and they do. Now, this really ticks Jonah off, strangely enough (he’s kind of a self-righteous guy). So God teaches him a lesson. When Jonah goes off to pout outside the city in the blazing sun, God makes a bush grow to shade him. Then the next day, God kills off the bush. Of course, Jonah pouts even more about this. But God says,

“You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about the Ninevah, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” –Jonah 4:10-11

First of all, it is kind of encouraging to think that God can use stubborn cranks like Jonah for good. This passage reminds me, too, that God really does look upon all of us with compassion. The whole book details God’s love for us, starting on the individual level with Jonah’s disobedience and rescue, and then spreading itself out to God’s salvation of an entire society. The beauty of Scripture is that, despite what the Jonahs of the world want to happen to us, it all points to a God that loves us, sees us with compassion, and does everything possible to save us from our own stupidity.

The whole passage also brought to my mind how self-righteous we all can be. We tend to like seeing people get what we think they deserve. And even though we know that’s not a Biblical ethic (remember the plank in your own eye?), it doesn’t really change our thinking in the end. Jonah wanted to see Ninevah go up in hellfire and brimstone for disobeying God, and would have been quite gleeful watching it happen from his little tent outside the city. Never mind that he had disobeyed God himself, and God had been merciful.

We face all sorts of moments in life where we’re tempted to give people what they deserve. We want to point out the things we know can wound them because they’ve wounded us. It is one thing to talk honestly about the things that have hurt you, and hold people accountable for that. It is another to stick it to them.

Because God has all sorts of ammo to stick to us… and refuses to use it. If we’re really following in the footsteps of Christ, shouldn’t we be merciful, too?

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” --Matthew 5:7

Kelsey

Hi Kelsey,

I really enjoyed your blog this morning. My husband and I studied Jonah with our bible study group about a year or so ago. We were amazed at God's great mercy and his patience with Jonah. After that study we studied several of the minor prophets including Nahum, which is God's judgement on Nineveh after the time of Jonah. In both cases we wondered why Jonah was so reluctant to preach to Nineveh and way so insistent that God punish them. Since they were his nation's enemies and they committed such atrocities as skinning people alive (See Biblical Review) it is understandable that Jonah felt that way. But when God says go you must go. And when God desires mercy, (and for the Christian I believe that is always) we must show mercy. By the way both of our study books, which were commentaries are written by women. The Jonah one is in the "Bible Speaks" series published by IVP and is written by Rosemary Nixon. The other is by the late Elizabeth Achtemeier and is a John Knox Press publication, in the "Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for teaching and Preaching" series. They are both very good.
Blessings in Christ,
Viola Larson