Jonah chapter 3 showed that God's forgiveness is for everyone who is truly repentant.
The last portion of the book only gets more amazing. While Jonah praised God for showing mercy to him, he was not very happy with God's mercy on others. It's the ultimate show of selfish religion and selfish faith – wanting the best for ourselves but the worst for those we hate.
How many of us have been, at the very least, tempted to wish the worst for someone, or have sniggered when something goes wrong for someone we dislike? I am not exempt from the temptation too. Not that Jonah expected any less from God: "I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in clemency, loathe to punish!" (Jon 4:2).
A plant and a worm
Jonah left the city when God questioned his right to be angry (4:4). The prophet sat where he could get a good view of the city, and waited to see destruction. It never came, so we can only imagine how long Jonah must have sat there in the sun, day after day.
God, of course, never lets a great lesson opportunity pass. He grew a plant over night, big enough to provide comfort and Jonah in the scorching day, making Jonah very happy. Then overnight, God took it away.
God went against the law of rewards here: that you work hard, be patient, and hope that everything falls in place for you.
Of course, the law is man-made by society and culture.
Jonah did nothing to earn the plant. He did not plant a seed. He did not water the soil; neither did he wait patiently for the plant to grow. There was no record of him even asking God to provide him with comfort (how could he anyway, since he surely knew he had evil in his heart while watching the city).
Yet, when God decided to take the plant away with nothing more than a worm, Jonah did an anti-Job (Job, of course, had everything taken away, but still praised God). Jonah begged God to let him die. Of course, once again, God shows mercy because Jonah obviously was talking nonsense.
But God reminded Jonah that if he felt sorry and frustrated over losing something he did not work to get, how much less could God care for Nineveh, which God Himself created?
Doesn't that sound familiar, the way we take things for granted? How we don't have to work for many of the things we get for free, yet get angry with God when it's taken away. But that's not the point here.
Going a level deeper, since God referred the big plant to the big city (4:10-11), we can now link Jonah to… the worm! The man was just like the worm, coming out of nowhere (he was in no position to judge anyone) to eat up the great plant! It was greedy, selfish and simply impossible to appreciate!
The book ends abruptly, so that we can draw our own conclusions. But for me, Jonah must have finally gotten the message now (which is funny, considering the fact that he's a prophet).
Sometimes we try to be like a little worm trying to destroy something God loves. But we have no right. Our call is to love and serve, that's all. If we have failed to do that in one way or another (and we all have), we must start evaluating ourselves and start to serve more fully and whole-heartedly, and selflessly.
There may be people in our lives we don't prefer. I have them. That's very human. But there's no reason to hate them, let alone want God to not forgive them for any wrong they might have done. The moment we place the judgment on these people in our lives, we place a judgment on ourselves and decline His forgiveness.
Let's acknowledge the fact that God loves our enemies. And that should be a sign of comfort for us because it is a measure of the distance His love and forgiveness go.
- Updated 1 Aug 2007
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