"A Reluctant Hero" By Diane Webb

“A reluctant hero” By Diane Webb

Jonah 2: 7 “When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord:  and my prayer came in unto thee, unto thine holy temple”.

“When my soul fainted within me” is very vivid.  Life was slowly ebbing away.  He was dying and he could feel it.  Dying when living outside the will of God is a bleak, abandoned feeling.  It was at this point so close to death Jonah cried out to God and God heard him.  Those who are as close to death as described here are most often changed in some way when they recover.  Jonah too was changed—for a little while anyway. He went on to preach to Nineveh as was his original mission.  The people of Nineveh were saved (God had pity on them in their ignorance).  Then Jonah seemed to regress back to his old self.  You’d think Jonah would be pleased his message was fruitful—his mission a success.  Instead he sat under a tree and pouted.  The tree died and he became suicidal—asking for death himself.  From the outside looking in he certainly seemed to either over-react or under-react to the various situations.  First, he runs from God because God asked him to do something he did not want to do (over-reacted).  Then, he slept while a storm raged (under-reacted).  Then, when tossed overboard and swallowed by a whale he finally turns back to God (almost too late).  He was not exited to have been a tool of salvation for an entire city (under-reacted).  He didn’t seem to notice the miracle of the tree growing overnight (under-reacted).  He wanted to die because the tree he was sitting under perished (over-reacted).  Jonah’s great successes were related to surviving his ordeal with the whale (under-reacted) and succeeding in his objective to Nineveh (under-reacted).  Yet somehow it seems he did not fully appreciate the presence of God’s influence in his life.  We can all identify with having a pity-party over something that, later, seemed petty or wrong-minded.  We can also relate to missing the point—not noticing God’s work in our lives.  On the one hand Jonah was afraid of death and prayed for life (in the belly of the whale).  On the other hand he was afraid of life and prayed for death (when he was hot and thirsty in the sun).  He did not seem to really know what he wanted.   He appeared to go from one extreme to the next and had few, if any, admirable qualities.  He would be described today as “wishy-washy”, “cowardly”, and other unflattering terms.  He is none the less a hero.  He did what God told him to do (although reluctantly) and Nineveh was saved.  Not much is said about the people of Nineveh after that.  It flourished for a while according to history but eventually was defeated and destroyed in battle. Some inhabitants, amazingly, escaped to the nearest Assyrian stronghold and the rest were massacred.  Ancient Nineveh is now in ruins. However, the Iraq city of Mogul is considered the re-built city of Nineveh by Aramaic speakers.  There are, interestingly, Christians in Mogul (modern day Nineveh)—Assyrian Christians who could be the survivors who fled to the nearest Assyrian city when ancient Nineveh was attacked.  It is estimated that 3% of the population of Iraq are Christians today and they are mainly Assyrian. (3% of Iraq’s population would be 69,000 people).   Jonah’s message to Nineveh likely led to a persistent group of individuals whose descendants are still living in that area as well as a core group of Christians in the troubled area.    This is not a bad legacy for an unlikely hero like Jonah!  God’s heroes are often regular, flawed, at times unstable, people who are willing to do his will and allow him to use them for his glory and his kingdom.

Dear Father in heaven, help me today to listen and obey everything you tell me to do.  Let me be a tool for your glory and the kingdom of God.  In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen