Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left-and much livestock?
Jonah 4:11
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus
What a blessed journey has this been for the last 2 days and coming to the end of the third day of the Three day fast, learning and understanding the Word of God from the life of Prophet Jonah. In the last two days, along with Jonah we learned to listen to the call of life, when he called out to God from the belly of the giant fish. We also learned to walk and hold on to God in times of spiritual and physical darkness in our lives, just as Jonah called on God in his darkness and was protected and delivered by God. As we reach the last leg of our journey, I would like to concentrate on the theme of ‘repentance’.
As we all know, after being vomited by the fish, Prophet Jonah heeding the voice of God went to the great and sinful city of Nineveh. But the message that he had to deliver was not one of warning but of punishment, a punishment from God for all the atrocities we learned in Part 1, and many more. And if we look at the behavior of Jonah on and after delivering this message, we would be right to think that he was glad that God was punishing the enemies of the people of Israel and was waiting gladly for the same. When we try to look at our lives and search deeper in our hearts, many a times we find that there is this small Jonah in every one of our lives, seeking pleasure in the destruction and fall of our fellow human beings. Many a times, in some part of our hearts, we tend to hold back on spreading the Word of God or we tend to use the Word of God seeking destruction on the some people. So, like Jonah, who waited for the destruction of the people of Nineveh while they fasted and repented for forty days, we too in our lives wait for some calamity to fall on our enemies.
But God shows His concern for the people of Nineveh through a plant, which grew up to give Jonah a shade from the harsh rays of the sun but was destroyed by a worm. But God says,
You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Jonah 4:10-11
When we look at the people of Nineveh, a city of people equaling 120,000, who were notorious for all their sinful deeds against the people surrounding them and all the other sinful acts, even we would declare that these people required the punishment that God had prepared for them. But after hearing the warning from Jonah, all the people of the city, from its king to least person, even children, along with their cattle started fasting and repenting of their sins and cried out to the Lord saying ‘O Lord, we have sinned’. And through their repentance, we see that they are given a hope of survival, when God has compassion on them.
In our daily lives, how many times do we repent of our sins and come clean in the presence of God? In our modern world, with all our latest gadgets and trinkets, do we really have the time to think about God and say to Him that ‘O God, I have sinned’? Do we really look at the situations in our life and know that we are sinners in our daily life? It seems to me that we have hardened our hearts and don’t think about the mercy of God in our life, which deters us our hearts to open up and repent with a whole heart.
Dear brothers and sisters, as we come to a close of the 3 Day of Lent and prepare for a great journey of repentance, let us look towards the hope that is shown to us at the end of the journey with the Resurrection of Jesus. Let the hope that was given to the people of Nineveh, who were on the brink of destruction, be also our guide from our destruction to a life ever-lasting in the presence of God.
May the love of God be with you always.
Your brother in Christ Jesus
Jobin George
