Um. Lord. That’s a really large mouth.

Lent day 4

When God prepares a big fish, no boat is big enough to save you.
As the original News Boys wrote in their song about Jonah, “lord how long is this gonna take? Stuck in the belly of a whale.”
God asks some crazy big stuff of us as His people. Not always, but some times, He sends us to speak to people we hate because He loves them. Sometimes He asks us to go where it is dangerous. Sometimes He breaks our bones so we will be in the right hospital at the right time to speak to someone about Him.
I admit a soft feeling toward Jonah. He didn’t want those horrible people of Ninivah who attacked travelers and raided towns and did all kinds of evil to be saved, and he certainly didn’t want to be the one to do the saving. Let them rot, it’s the least they deserve, was his point of view.
Yet God loved the souls of the people and wanted to forgive them and to save them.
We all have people we can’t stand. Some are fellow Christians. Others are lost people in need of Jesus, that doesn’t mean they aren’t terrible people, people who have hurt you or make you feel just sick inside; what it means is that God loves them and wants them to come to Him. I think of Corrie Ten boon speaking to the Nazi Soldier who had beaten her sister. The man had come to know Jesus and had sought her out to ask her forgiveness, and in her heart she said no, she admits to hating him fully and completely and nobody can blame her. But. She prayed and told God that if he wanted her to forgive that man he was going to have to do it through her, cuz she couldn’t do it herself. And he did, and her heart was filled with love for him and compassion. God may send us to Nineveh, but he won’t ever send us alone. He will always go with us, and will help us to love those we would prefer to hate.