True words spoken in anger
| But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live." (Jonah4:1-3) |
Jonah is angry. Unspeakably angry. We might say Jonah is having a "vloermoer" (Afrikaans for floor-beating - imagine a two year old lying on the ground throwing a tantrum.)
"I knew it! I just knew it!!! I knew you were going to be merciful to these @#$! Ninevites. You bring me all the way to Nineveh to pronounce judgement and I spend three days threatening them with judgement and now you decide to be all merciful. I'm the laughing stock of all the prophets!!"
But in his anger Jonah offers us absolute truth:
GOD is:
- gracious
- and compassionate
- slow to anger
- and abounding in love
- and He relents from sending calamity.
Deep down Jonah has always known that this is what God is like. But he had constructed a religious framework that put God into a box of nationalistic faith - Jonah cherished the idea that God had favourites and that his enemies were therefore God's enemies. When God burst out of the box that Jonah had so carefully constructed, Jonah exploded.
When God breaks the mould of our pet theologies and religious frameworks we also struggle. The deep truth is that God loves radically. His love includes the broken, the unlovely, the different and, to top it all He loves our enemies and the people that hurt us. This messes with Jonah and it messes with you and me...
