Is there a person, a situation, or a place that scares you? Overwhelms
you? Angers you? Makes you question God? Causes you to want to run in
the opposite direction of where you should be going, hoping nobody finds
you? That’s your Nineveh!
The Old Testament prophet, Jonah, faced such a place, and experienced all of those emotions and then some. Yes, that’s right: Jonah. That poor man we learn about in Sunday school, who was swallowed by a whale, and then was spit up on a foreign shore, all because he didn’t obey God. We remember only the simplest of details about him, and if he reappears in our adult life, we smile, and remember that rather childish story about him…a whale can’t swallow a man! And so Jonah joins that Sunday school parade of interesting characters whose shenanigans are to remind us to obey God. Simple. Right? Wrong. Jonah and his experiences speak to us where we are, right here and now.
The Old Testament prophet, Jonah, faced such a place, and experienced all of those emotions and then some. Yes, that’s right: Jonah. That poor man we learn about in Sunday school, who was swallowed by a whale, and then was spit up on a foreign shore, all because he didn’t obey God. We remember only the simplest of details about him, and if he reappears in our adult life, we smile, and remember that rather childish story about him…a whale can’t swallow a man! And so Jonah joins that Sunday school parade of interesting characters whose shenanigans are to remind us to obey God. Simple. Right? Wrong. Jonah and his experiences speak to us where we are, right here and now.
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