After the whole city of Nineveh repented, you would have thought Jonah would have been ecstatic – it was an incredibly successful street outreach!
However, his self-righteous prayer shows just how much he still had to learn about the mercy of God. We may be the means of God’s mission, but we must also heed the message for ourselves.
Despite our disobedience, God refuses to give up on us – his mission is far too important. Through Jonah, God used a message of judgement to change a whole city. As we are obedient to God’s missional call, we may well be surprised by how people respond.
In the middle of a crisis, most people will try praying. It took being swallowed by a fish for Jonah to finally pray to his God and to remember salvation is found in him alone.
Like Jonah, we often try in vain to run from God’s call to mission, but he will use any means necessary to get our attention and to expose our fears and prejudices: sometimes storms, sometimes the very people we are trying so hard to avoid.
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