Jonah

Oh, that we were different from Jonah, the man most famous for being told to go one way who went the exact opposite direction. Oh, that we don't try to run from God, not that Jonah was the first--there's plenty of precedent with Adam and Eve, Hagar, Jacob, Moses, etc. Oh, that we don't need to be reminded not only that we act JUST THE SAME, but that we do it ALL THE TIME.

This shows where Jonah was supposed to go vs. where he went:

Jonah was instructed to go to Nineveh, as any watcher of Veggie Tales knows, and that in itself would have been a major travel, about 500 miles or so. Instead, Jonah heads out for Tarshish, which the NIV Study Bible hypothesizes is in southern Spain, or by my reckoning, about 1500-2000 miles from Israel. We all know what it means, but it bears repeating--Jonah was trying to get as far away from God as he could in order to avoid doing what the Lord commanded.

I've always been interested in the end of the story, where Jonah voices his disappointment in the Lord in sparing Nineveh. First (and completely unsupported by anything written prior), Jonah claims to have attempted to flee to Tarshish precisely because he knew God would eventually show compassion. Even so, he heads out of town to watch the festivities, the fireworks of his day, but that wasn't to be. God was kind enough to provide a vine as shade, but took it away the next day. I never realized how abruptly Jonah ends, with God instructing  Jonah in his ways. We're not privy to how Jonah received this.

Things haven't changed in the modern world. All of us attempt to flee to Tarshish in our own ways, with two important differences:

1. Nobody writes about it (and we keep our anonymity)

2. We do it WAY MORE THAN ONCE

It's pretty obvious that the Lord forgave Jonah, and why not--he forgave a penitent Nineveh, so why wouldn't he forgive Jonah? He'll forgive us too, which means that the next time God calls, we should stay off the boat.

Scott