Praise the Lord! It seems like the days are passing so fast! God has already added another week of time-span to our life – a new week with new possibilities and/or new challenges! When a new day/week/month added to our life on earth, it is like the monthly text message Mint Mobile (a wireless telephone network service provider that is currently part of T-Mobile) sends to their customers, which says: “It’s a new month and you’ve got a fresh tank of your Mint monthly 20GB of data. You’ve got until June 8, 2024 to use it.” The company sends such messages every month until the contract-period ends to assure its customers that the data is available for their use. The quantity of the data (the measurement of available data in gb/mb/gb) and the expiry date (xx/xx/xxxx) indicated with it will give an estimation of how to use the data available within the given time-period – this means, we need to use the given space and time very adequately.  Similarly, when God blesses us with another day/week/month/year in our life, we need to be wise enough to use the given space and time properly and purposefully for the glory of God’s holy name and for the welfare of all those whom we come across. The God who has blessed us is not a God just for us, rather, He is the God of everyone and everything that is in the universe, which means, He is not the God of just one person or a group or a particular location but He is the God of all, for He created the universe and everything in it (Genesis 1:1-31; Psalm 24:1). We are privileged to worship the Creator God and it is the same God who took the form of a human being and came down to this earth to save sinful humanity, to give them life abundantly (John 3:16; 10:10), and one day He will take them to be with Him forever (John 14:2-3; 1 Corinthians 2:9; 1 John 5:10-13). As one waits for His second coming, they can pray to Him for spiritual guidance, comfort, strength, and peace He offered to them (John 14:27).

The passage for this week’s Scripture for the Week meditation is taken from Jonah 4:2, which states that He [prophet Jonah] prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing 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. This verse shows that Jonah was upset with God for doing good to the people of Nineveh, who were the enemies of Israel at that time. According to Jonah, the good God did for the Ninevites was that God did not send the calamity upon them as He had threatened earlier because of their sinful actions and attitude (Jonah 3:10; 4:10-11), which Jonah considered as a wrong move from God’s side (Jonah 4:1a [3:4]). Thus, Jonah got angry with God for not sending calamity upon the Ninevites as He had intended (Jonah 4:1b-2 [3:4]) because Jonah considered the Ninevites as his enemies due to their attacks on the people of Israel. As an Israelite, the nation’s enemy is his enemy too. Although he was angry, he made a statement and in it he confessed two things: (i) the reason he disobeyed God’s commands while he was in his hometown [disobeying God’s command – not going to Nineveh, instead fleeing to Tarshish] (Jonah 1:1-3), and (ii) revealing God’s attributes that saved the Ninevites from calamity and danger (a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity [Jonah 4:2b]).

As one of the prophets of the Lord God Almighty and while doing his prophetical ministry in the Northern Kingdom Israel, God commanded Jonah son of Amittai to go and preach against Nineveh (a city that stood as the symbol of Assyrian royalty and luxury) because its wickedness has reached before God (1:1-2). For Jonah, the Assyrians/Ninevites were the enemies of the Israelites and vice versa due to their on-going warfare against the Israelites. Due to this reason Jonah does not want either to go to Nineveh or preach against it the message the Lord had given him, instead he headed towards Tarshish (Jonah 1:3). Although, Jonah ran away from his native place thinking that he is running away from God, he could not run away from the Sovereign Lord because there is no place where God’s presence is absent (Psalm 139:7-10). The Lord God who is compassionate and righteous (i) caught him while he was in a ship to Tarshish, (ii) saved him from the hands of the sailors who threw him in the sea, (iii) delivered him from the dangers of the deep waters, (iv) safeguarded him in the mouth/belly of a huge fish; and (v) re-directed him back to the city of Nineveh for the special mission he was called to – that is, to preach against the city of Nineveh (Jonah 1:2). Below mentioned are the steps (life-situations) he went through from his native land (Gath-hepher) to the land of the new assignment/ministry (the city of Nineveh):

• • God’s command to Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach against it (1:1-2 [3:1-2])
  • Jonah’s disobedience to God’s command of going to Nineveh (1:3a)
  • Jonah’s alternative plan of action to run away from the Lord – a voyage to Tarshish via Joppa instead of Nineveh (1:3b)
  • God’s master plan to bring Jonah back to accomplish his given task (1:4-16)
    • The Lord sent a violent storm on the sea (1:4)
    • The impact of Jonah’s disobedience upon the people around him (1:5-6)
    • Jonah admits his mistake to rest of the sailors and reveals his identity (1:7-10)
    • Jonah’s proposal to solve the immediate trouble that came upon the sailors (1:11-16)
  • God’s way of saving Jonah from the depth of the sea – God sent a huge fish (1:17-2:10)
    • The huge fish that God sent swallowed Jonah (1:17a)
    • The huge fish that swallowed Jonah saved him from dying in the sea (1:17b)
    • Jonah spent three days and three night in the belly of the huge fish (1:17c)
    • Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the huge fish (2:1)
    • Jonah’s repentance while he was in the belly of the huge fish (2:2-6a)
    • Jonah praised the God of Israel from the belly of the huge fish (2:6b-9)
    • The Lord’s command to the huge fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land (2:10)
  • God’s command to Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh and proclaim the message He gave him to proclaim (3:1-9)
    • God’s command to Jonah and Jonah’s obedience to God’s command (3:1-3)
    • Jonah’s proclamation of God’s message to the people of Nineveh (3:4)
    • The response of the people of Nineveh and their counter-action (3:5)
      •  The Ninevites believed God (3:5a)
      • They repented of their actions (3:5b)
      • They declared a fast throughout the land (3:5c)
      • The king’s response to God’s message to the Ninevites (3:6)
      • The king and his nobles’ issued a special decree for proclamation (3:7-8)
      • The king and his nobles confidence in the Lord God Almighty (3:9)
  • God’s deliverance to the Ninevites is declared (3:10)

Finally, after all the chaotic incidents, Jonah arrived in the city of Nineveh (Jonah 3:3). He was able to proclaim the message God had given him to the people of Nineveh but he was not happy about the outcome that message brought out. After all, he just wanted to preach the God-given message to them (just for name sake), at the same time, he also wanted to see God’s judgement falling upon them to punish them. Contrary to all that he dreamed about the entire episode regarding the Ninevites, the impact that message brought upon the people of Nineveh was beyond his imagination. When Jonah proclaimed the God-given message to the people of Nineveh, (i) they accepted it, (ii) they turned from their evil ways, (iii) they repented of their wrong deeds, (iv) they put on sackcloth, (v) they declared a city-wide fast (Jonah 3:4-5). As a result, God forgave the city and did not send the calamity as He had decreed against them earlier: When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened (Jonah 3:10). This action of God was what instigated Jonah to get angry with God and blame Him for not sending calamity upon Nineveh (Jonah 4:2). Jonah, being an Israelite, despite serving the God of the universe who is gracious and compassionate, wanted to see the destruction of the Assyrians/Ninevites because the Assyrians did a great deal of harm to the Israelites. When the outcome for Nineveh turned out to be opposite of what Jonah had in mind (Jonah 4:5 [3:4]), Jonah got upset with God and blamed God for sparing their lives by not sending the calamity (Jonah 4:2, 11). Let us briefly examine the statement Jonah made before God: He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing 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 (Jonah 4:2)

• • Jonah did not keep quiet before God rather expressed his feeling before God as he prayed to Him (4:2a)
  • Jonah knew that God is going to spare the Ninevites from the calamity He intended to send upon them at the time itself when God commanded Jonah to go and preach against the city (4:2b)
  • Jonah remembers that it happened the way he thought even before he started his journey from his hometown (4:2c)
  • Jonah discloses his reason for fleeing to Tarshish when God commanded him to go and preach against the city of Nineveh (4:2d)
  • Jonah, perhaps from his previous experiences with God, knew that God is gracious God (4:2e)
  • Jonah, perhaps from his previous experiences, knew that God is a compassionate God (4:2f)
  • Jonah, perhaps from his previous experiences with God, knew that God is slow to anger (4:2g)
  • Jonah, perhaps from his previous experiences, knew that God is abounding in love (4:2h)
  • Jonah, perhaps from his previous experiences, knew that God is a God who relents from sending calamity (4:2i)

From the life-experiences of Jonah described in the book of Jonah, we can learn that the Lord God Almighty is Sovereign over all. Jonah wished to outsmart God and ran away from the God-given task of proclaiming God’s message to the people of Nineveh but wherever he turned he saw the hand of God working against his plans. The question arises here is that: Can one, especially a chosen one of God, run away from God or from the God-given mission? The answer is – No! As a human being, we cannot run away from the presence of God because the holy Scriptures, particularly from the writer of Psalm 139, says there is no place in the universe, visible or invisible locations, where God’s presence is absent:

7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast (Psalm 139:7-10)

Jonah could run away only a little while or for a short distance from his hometown. As the Psalmist mentioned (139:7-10), compared to that of climbing up to the highest heavens or descending to the deepest depths of the earth or going to the far side of the sea, Jonah went only a short distance, that is from his hometown Gath-hepher to Joppa and some distance from Joppa towards Tarshish (Jonah 1:3 [2 Kings 14:25]). That is, perhaps, Noah travelled farther overall than directly traveling to Nineveh from Gath-hepher.  Throughout this journey, God used many for His purpose:

• • God uses his chosen ones for His purpose, in this case Jonah, being a prophet of God in Israel (2 Kings14:25), was chosen for the special task to proclaim God’s message to the Ninevites
  • God used the captain, the crew, and the sailors in the ship that is bound towards Tarshish for His purpose
  • God used the sea and sea creatures for His purpose
  • God used the huge fish (Genesis 1:21a; Psalm 104:26) to swallow and later to vomit Jonah onto dry land of Nineveh
  • God used Jonah to proclaim His message the people of Nineveh
  • God used Jonah to bring God’s message to the Ninevites and save them from the calamity God intended to send upon them

Jonah went through all kinds of struggles for no reason. Jonah tried to flee from the Lord who had called him for ministry, but Jonah failed in all his attempts. God re-directed all his trips and brought him to Nineveh and made him proclaim God’s word to the people of Nineveh. As a result, the people of Nineveh turned from their evil ways and repented of their sins and the Lord relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened (Jonah 3:1-10; 4:10-11). Although, Jonah tried to change his life and ministry in connection with his call for a special mission to Nineveh, he was one of the most admired prophets during the Old Testament time and Jesus also mentioned him with high regard:

39 He [Jesus] answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here (Matthew 12:39-41)

Dear friends, when Jonah did such a thing (disobeying God’s commands and running away from the Lord), most of us may fault him for doing such a blunder before an Omniscient (all-knowing), Omnipresent (present-everywhere), Omnipotent (all-powerful), and a gracious and compassionate God. Bear with me in saying this: it is not just Jonah who did such mistakes, many of us (that is, you and I) also did similar mistakes so many times in our life so far. Not only that, knowingly or unknowingly, we might be repeatedly doing the same mistakes every now and then based on our life-situations. Just think about it …

• • Many of us ignored God’s call in our life every time He called us for His ministry, like the rich young man who wanted follow Jesus but dropped out of the plan (Mark 10:17-31)
  • Many of us try to postpone our calling to a later time, the person who said first let me go back and say goodbye to my family or let me go and bury my father (Matthew 8:21; Luke 9:59, 61)
  • Many of us are unwilling to enter into God’s ministry, thinking that time has not yet come to give up on what they hold on to (Proverbs 3:5-6; Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11; John 9:4; Galatians 4:4)
  • Many of us are running away from God-given responsibility, like the Old Testament prophet Jonah (Jonah 1:1-17)
  • Many of us who are in the ministry are not carrying out God’s ministry faithfully according to the pattern our Lord and Savior Jesus set for us, like one working hard to profit only themselves (Micah 3:11; Matthew 24:48-51; Acts 5:3, 9; Titus 1:10-11; 2 Peter 2:3)

Despite all Jonah’s willful spiritual blunders, God fulfilled His purpose through him (bringing him to Nineveh and making him proclaim God’s message to the people of Nineveh). The God who accomplished His purpose through Jonah will definitely fulfill His purpose in and through our life also, even if we try to overturn God’s overall purpose for us or anyone else God intended to bless in and through our lives. It is the Lord God who strengthens us and enables each and every one of us to be faithful to Him for He is the One who entrusted us with His ministry. Therefore, let us obey God’s commands and consecrate our life for the purpose the Lord God called us to. Let us be faithful to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who saved our life by laying down His very life and let us not hesitate to carry out the ministry for which we are called to. May the Lord God Almighty bless us all! Amen!