Run, Jonah, Run

"The word of the LORD came to Jonah, son of Amittai: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh...' But Jonah ran away from the LORD."


-Jonah 1:1-2a & 3a, NIV


"Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."


-James 4:17, NIV




I have had an anxious knot in my chest all day.  I wish that God would ask anything else of me.  But no--this is what He desires.  I have never felt more like Jonah.  I want to run away and hide; I do not want to carry out this task.  I know that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love; and I know that, even in this, He wants me to imitate Him.  It makes me angry, that God should expect this of me.


Call me the Unmerciful Servant (Matthew 18:21-35, NIV), but just this once I'd like to pass on forgiveness.  It's hard.  It hurts.  I don't want to.


"Because I love you, I tell you that it's not about what you want.  It's about what God has decided, and it would seem that He has spoken.  Therefore, you better get your butt off to Nineveh.  Soon, your desire will go along with your obedience, for it is God's desire, and He helps us conform our desires to His when we follow Him.  He also promises to dry the tears that fall on the road to Nineveh."


-A Friend


Those words were sent to me in a text message today, while I was at work.  I bit my lip and hid in a stall and cried.  I won't lie; I stood there and demanded a few things of God:  "God, why this?  Why are you so insistent that I do this one thing, forgive this one offense, when I am willing to give everything else, to do anything else, to go anywhere else, for Your sake?"  Of course, He answered me:


"What is more pleasing to the LORD: your burnt offerings and sacrifices, or your obedience to His voice?  Listen!  Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams."


-1 Samuel 15:22


Forgive as I forgave you.  If you will not obey Me in this, then I will not accept the offering up of your life for My service.


Those quiet, sober words staggered me.  I have harbored secret anger and hatred in my heart; therefore, it is God's will that I should leave my gift at the altar until I am reconciled to the one I have wronged by doing so.  Unless I do, God will look upon my offering--my gifts, my passion, my desire to surrender my life to Him--as He looked upon the offering of Cain.


You are waiting on a beach
This is where east meets west
And as another sun sets on your anger
The darkness laughs as the wound destroys
And it turns your prayers into noise


Will you forgive?
Will you forget?
Will you live what you know?
He left His rights
Will you leave yours?
You don't understand it
Let it go


This bitterness you hide
It seeps into your soul
And steals your joy
'Til it's all you know
Let it go


("Let It Go," by the Newsboys)


This is a hurt I have held onto for a long time, to the point where I had almost forgotten about it.  Now I am intentionally ignoring it.  And yet I cannot escape it.  There is nothing in me, in my human nature, that desires or is able to do this... but nothing is impossible with God.  Below is an excerpt from Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place, which I have thought of often when considering my inability to forgive this terrible wrong:


"It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, a former S.S. man, who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck.  He was the first of our actual jailers I had seen since that time.  And suddenly it was all there--the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie's pain blanched face.


He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing.  'How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,' he said.  'To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!'  His hand was thrust out to shake mine.  And I, who had preached so often to the people at Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.


Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them.  Jesus Christ died for this man; was I going to ask for more?  Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.  I tried to smile; I struggled to raise my hand.  I could not.  I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity.  And so again I breathed a silent prayer.  Jesus, I prayed, I cannot forgive him.  Give me your forgiveness.


As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened.  From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.  And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness anymore than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His.  When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself."


This story, especially the last sentence, gives me hope.  I don't want to be like Jonah.  He ran from God, physically and spiritually, stubbornly clinging to his bitter and unforgiving spirit to the very end.  I have always thought that the book of Jonah ends in a rather dissatisfying way.  I'd rather be like David, who ran towards Goliath to meet him in battle.


Pray for me.