“I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”
Jonah 4:2 NIV
Mostly what people know about Jonah, usually from Sunday School lessons, is that he was swallowed by a fish. Our text today begins after that fish story, when Jonah set out a second time in his attempt to flee from God’s call which had put him in the fish’s belly in the first place. Jonah was sent to deliver God’s message of destruction to wicked Nineveh (Jonah 3:4). When the people of Nineveh repented, “God changed His mind about the calamity that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it” (Jonah 3:10). Jonah was furious, but not at all surprised. This, he said, is why he had fled earlier: “I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in love, and relenting from sending calamity”. On Ash Wednesday, as we reflect on ourselves as made from and returning to dust (Genesis 2:7; 3:19), like Jonah, we too may ask: shouldn’t life, shouldn’t God, be fair? But Scripture says no! Instead, God is gracious and compassionate. This offends our sense of fairness until we are the ones in need of grace and compassion. Friends, as people made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), may we extend to others the grace and compassion God has undeservedly lavished on us. May our Lord teach us through these forty days to be gracious and compassionate, to love as we have been loved, to forgive as we have been forgiven.
PRAYER THOUGHT
Lord, teach us to be gracious and compassionate.
PRAYER FOR TODAY
Thank you, God, for showering your grace and compassion upon us. Teach us through these forty days to be gracious and compassionate, to love as we have been loved, to forgive as we have been forgiven. AMEN
INTERNATIONAL BIBLE READING ASSOCIATION (IBRA)
John 5:36-39
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