“ Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? This is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord take away my life,for it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4:1-3)

These are the words of the prophet Jonah after he had spread the word in the city of Nineveh of God’s displeasure at their sinfulness, and His plan to destroy the city if there was no repentance. Jonah had resisted this assignment unsuccessfully sailing in the opposite direction to hide from his God. Jonah’s reaction to the repentance of the king and population of Nineveh was strange, for he knew God well enough that the citizen’s repentance would bring forgiveness from God, as it did.

We sometimes think of Jonah as a coward, but the story unfolds with Jonah insisting that the crew of the ship on which he was escaping to Tarshish, throw him into the very stormy sea, a solution to quiet the storm that the crew rejected until there seemed to be no other option.

Jonah, who appears to behave out of cowardice, proves that in fact he is incredibly brave. In reading his story, I wondered about Jonah’s anger when God relented and refused to destroy Nineveh; and it occurred to me that Jonah Might not have been afraid of losing just his own credibility, but that the citizens of Nineveh would repent without acknowledging Jonah’s message, the God who had sent him. It seemed that Jonah was actually afraid of his God’s credibility being ignored, with his own credibility destroyed.

Jonah was facing a faith crisis when God sent him to Nineveh. He was mostly afraid that the Spirit of God that was the center of his life and ministry would be discredited, an outcome worse than death to Jonah. Physical death was less abhorrent to Jonah than the loss of credibility both to Israel’s enemies, the citizens of Nineveh, as well as to the rest of the world, who might hear of his ministry and believe it to have been in vain.

Centuries later Jesus chose Jonah to compare to his own ministry: “The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, but now something greater than Jonah is here.” (Matthew 12:4) Jonah was very brave, and he talked with God, but the grace of a God who would die for him was unknown to Jonah. He had never known Jesus , the one who was greater than he.

Love in Him,

Prue