Today's Meditation - Friday, October 30, 2020

 

Today’s Meditation – Friday, October 30, 2020

Read Jonah 4:6-11

⁶The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. ⁷But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. ⁸When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” ⁹But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” ¹⁰Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. ¹¹And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

          It seemed that Jonah still needed to be taught a lesson.  So, while he sat outside the city, grumbling to himself, God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah to shade him from the fierce sun.  At which Jonah became quite happy and pleased concerning the comfort provided by the bush.

          But then, overnight, God caused the bush to wither by the work of a worm that attacked it.  The next day when the sun was hot overhead, God sent an east wind that made the heat unbearable for Jonah and Jonah became faint and wanted to die.

          God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?”  And Jonah, still mad at God about Nineveh, thrust all of his anger onto the calamity of the bush.

          Explaining the situation to Jonah, God says, “You care so much about a single plant that simply existed for a day and a night – that you did nothing for.  What about the 120,000 people in Nineveh?  Should I, God, not be concerned about them?”

          The big take-away from this story is that God is indeed slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, as Jonah rightly knew.  But, we, too, should be slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  We, too, should care as much (or more) about other human beings as we sometimes care about much lesser things.