“Jonah went out and
sat down at a place east of the city.
There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited…” Jonah
4:5.
Well you would never know this was one of God’s prophets by
his actions. After he gave the Ninevites
God’s message you would have thought he would have returned to his city…his
people… his comforts of home. Instead,
he removed himself from the city but to an area that still provided a bird’s
eye view. Jonah made himself a shelter
of bitterness and wallowed in its shade.
There he sat and waited…eyes to the sky looking for God’s wrath to come
down… ears to the ground to hear the pounding of God’s discipline…nothing!
He squinted towards the horizon looking for any type of discomfort from
God against the Ninevites…nothing but calm and peaceful across the
landscape. As his emotions flared up in
his soul, he realized his emotional discomfort was matched by his physical
discomfort. What happened next is a testament
to the awesome God we serve…grace happened next.
‘So the LORD God appointed a plant
and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his
discomfort’ Jonah 4:6.
We have all been spiritual stinkers at different times in
our lives. We carry the message of God
on our lips to those we really don’t care for in our hearts. We sound the part but don’t act the
part. We build our shelters of
entitlement and judge what others deserve and watch for God to act upon their
lives. We have a dislike for God’s mercy
to those who have not treated us the way we believe we deserve. Oh, we would never admit this so we camp on
the outskirts of our relationships sitting…waiting…watching. When we see that the person is getting mercy,
getting a pass from God we become angry and discontent. And what we deserve we do not get just like
the person we are watching. We get grace…
It is so easy to judge what others should receive or not
receive from God. Instead of our eyes to
our enemies we should have our knees to the ground in humility. Even when we are at our worst, God is at His
best.
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