This past week in the Daily Audio Bible, we read the book and story of Jonah, the reluctant and annoyed prophet of God. It's a famous story and a short book, so I won't recap it here. Also, there are many nuggets in this story, but for the sake of brevity, I'll focus on 3 key points.
You Can't Run from God
God directs Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capitol city of the Assyrian empire--the bitter enemies of the Hebrew people. He tells Jonah to warn the people of Nineveh that if they don't turn things around, He is going to destroy the city. But Jonah doesn't want to do what God has asked him to do. In fact, he would like nothing more than for God to destroy Nineveh. So he runs away from God.
At least, he tries to. He goes in the opposite direction from Nineveh.
The sailors on the ship Jonah takes for his escape attempt figure out that he's the reason for the deadly storm, so they throw him overboard and leave him for dead.
But God finds him. This leads to my next point.
God Will Still Save You
Even though Jonah was trying to run away from God, God sends a giant fish (or whale) to save him. God is kind, so He saves us, too, even when we're trying to run away from him. But His ways are also mysterious, since Jonah survives for 3 days in the belly of the fish without getting digested. It might also be that the way He is working on saving you (or the way He saved you) doesn't look much like a rescue story, either. But it is.
And also, not to be deterred, guess where God has the fish barf out Jonah? You guessed it--Nineveh.
This leads to my final point.
God Wants to Save Everyone, Even Our Enemies
Jonah is the only prophet that we know about who God sent to someone other than the Hebrew people. But the Assyrians were wicked people, so why did God want to save them? Because they were wicked, and He didn't want them to stay that way.
This seems a little extreme at first, until you realize that most of us aren't descended from the 12 tribes of Israel, and we all have streams or rivers of darkness running through our hearts, so Jonah is also speaking to us on God's behalf (not just the people of Nineveh).
God Wants to save us because He loves us. This time of Advent is a time for us to reflect on God's invasion of this cruel and wicked world to save us from ourselves. And this story of Jonah shows us another example of the lengths to which He will go to rescue us, His beloved.
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