jonah, chapter 3

1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,  [He is not too great to repeat Himself. praise God!]

2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. [when i teach, i'd like this kind of yieldedness. go preach the preaching I bid thee. that is a very daring place of dependence. the kind of dependence i read about in God’s Smuggler, where brother andrew went to an anti-christian land and met with underground christians led only by the spirit of God. i knew someone who used to smuggle bibles, what a powerful calling. are we all called to that kind of service and obedience or just a few brave souls?]
 
3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.  [jonah did as the Lord wanted. i don’t see jonah as a new believer, or a young convert. i imagine him to be more stable and set in his faith. he knew enough of God to know He would have mercy on nineveh. a friend of mine pointed out that nineveh is somewhere in modern day middle east, she asked, would i go there and proclaim the word of the Lord, and how many words would i get out before i had my head chopped off? I have another friend who is moving her family to europe to be missionaries. what a calling. what faith. i am challenged to get out of my comfort, to forego my ease and move out in faith to reach the lost.]

4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.  [talk about looking the fool. i would like to teach someday, but to teach this way, in utter dependence on God.  in utter abandonment of my own agenda. that is truly a calling from on High.]

5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.  [wow. for being heathens, they sure responded quickly.]
 
6 For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.  [another impressive response from a heathen king. it sometimes feels like even christians don’t respond with such immediacy, such trust. we rightly weigh prophetic words, but in a land in pursuit of almighty diversion it is easy to simply forget the callings and cause of Christ. it is easy to rest in our seeming abundance of possessions and material, that modern day christians, many americans, myself among them may be surprised to find ourselves the ones who thought ourselves rich but when we get to heaven will find we are naked, blind, and poor in the things of God. i don’t want this to be my heavenly surprise. i want to be surprised by all the colors, shapes, and sizes of people the Lord let in. i want to be surprised by His kindness and mercy, not by my ignorance and stubbornness. those plague me enough here. i want to be like this heathen king and lay down my robes when the Lord speaks correction and cover myself with the garment of mourning that the Lord may have mercy on me.]
 
7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:  [their animals fasted with them. that is a fast! i believe this is called an absolute fast, no drink nor water. heavy duty fasting. this heathen king really knew how to repent. he really knew how to humble himself before the Lord of mercy. if i knew nothing else of the Lord, this is what i’d like to know. how to get right.]

8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.  [even the animals were clothed in sackcloth. this moves me. this king was not only repenting for the evil he had perpetrated, but for the entire land. he exhorted his people to cry out to the forgiving God. it doesn’t say anywhere that he heard the word of correction from jonah. he heard it via messenger. there is some prophet saying, in forty days we’ll die. it says jonah entered the city a day’s journey, but the city was three day’s journey wide, so would he have even made it to the king? i don’t think so. if he hadn’t then the people proclaiming a fast was an act of sheer and utter repentence. they couldn’t wait for the king to weigh this word so heavy were their hearts. then, when the king did hear of it, in his agreement, he went a step further and included the animals in their fast. what a nation. i don’t know that america is capable of this kind of repentence, even though we think ourselves a christian nation (maybe that is why, we may be more of a pharasaical nation). would we humble ourselves at the word of one unknown servant of God? i seriously doubt it and that is sad. i have known in my spirit that we must, as a nation, repent of our treatment of minorities. all minorities. african slaves, native americans who were slaughtered for manifest destiny, chinese and all asians who were interned in camps, hispanics who are still leaned heavily upon as a legal form of slavery. i am sure there are many more i am forgetting or unaware of, but as i read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee i wept for the atrocities committed against natives. when i began to learn of the plight of slavery, i saw the same face of evil. it is not merely men who are acting here. it is a great design of the enemy. as a minority i never felt it my place or right to repent on behalf of the perpetrators of these injustices. but i would gladly join in a group repenting, because it needs to be done. (someone asked me, how many people does it take to repent for the nation? i said, i don’t know, i’m not sure there is any number God requires. i would like to see at least a small group of people do this. that is just my inclination, not a prerequisite.) these evils are in need of repentence, will we repent? i hope so. this heathen king shows us how]

9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?  [the thing that strikes me most about this king is, he has no certainty he will be heard, but he repents anyway. we have the certainty. maybe that is why we don’t? we are to busy living our christian ideals to repent of the wrongs of a nation. (btw, if you would like to join me in an act of repentance for our country, let me know and i will do what i can to organize it)] 

10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. [this is as sweet as when hezekiah turned his face to the wall and said, Lord, consider how I have lived before you. and Isaiah turned on his heel to say, the Lord heard you. (i have often wondered how humbling it is for a prophet to say, thus sayeth the Lord, then have God change His mind. does it look like, and feel like failure to our human senses? i don’t think God much cares about how we look in the eyes of men, as long as we do what He says.) God repents, why don’t we? are we too proud? am i too proud? usually that is the case if i can’t muster repentence. sure we have in God We Trust on our currency, but this is not a christian nation. in california, the liberal fringe has just acted to have all the crosses removed from county seals. they did nothing about the pagan goddess who adorns the seal as well. it was just the christian God they abhor. will we rally behind this President in november or watch as things in this nation turn away from embracing christianity and moral absolutes. after 911, the President was riding waves of prayer. he seemed bullet proof, humble, submitted to God. my prayers for him have slackened as the days draw forgetfulness like a curtain over my prayers for the President. but i must repent of this too. and change.]