Jonah 4:1-2

But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee 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.” (Jonah 4:1-2)

God broke into Jonah’s world: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it” (Jonah 1:1). “Go” shook Jonah’s world. Preaching against a foreign, enemy land in a culture far different from his own is hard enough. It is life-disturbing.

Yet, “To the great city of Nineveh” was probably the phrase that caused Jonah’s heart to quiver and quake and flee. This phrase knocked against a mountain of theology, its firm foothills founded in the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant. It was a theology of generations repeated time and time again, a theology from the mountain-shaking revelation of God. The Jews were the people of God. The Gentiles would come to the holy Mount Zion to worship Yahweh.* It was unheard of for a prophet to go to another nation. Nineveh was the epitome of all that defied Yahweh and profaned his name. This called for judgment, as the covenants and their history of holy wars and the other prophets (Amos, Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk) declared.

Calling the Ninevites to repent? That was outside of Jonah’s theology. Later, it seems that he had had hints of it—“Lord, I knew you were compassionate and gracious.” But his heart and his faith had not been ready to accept it. He let his experience and his past define his God.

It is a dangerous thing to let our experiences, hurts, culture, and reason define God. Yet, it is hard to see when we box God in. Sometimes, even when we see, our heart and faith doesn’t quite seem ready to receive. We block. Deny. Crouch in our camp of theology. Hold tight to the key because we are afraid of the pain to go there. Close doors because close friends might chide. Try to intellectually convince or unconvince ourselves of what our heart deep rumbles says might be true, but is not ready to receive. Yet, we are hungry, hungry—we long for all of God, to know all of Jesus, to give him all of our hearts and to let him give us all that he can. We cry out and hope our hearts catch up.

A mustard seed of faith can move mountains. An acorn in a crack triumphs over the boulders. Seeds sown grow.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Mat. 7:7-8)

“O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” (Ps. 63:1)

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may STRENGTHEN you with POWER through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have POWER, together with all the saints, to GRASP how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…” (Eph. 3:16-18)

*Zephaniah (2:11) was the first prophet to give a clearer indication that Gentiles would worship the Lord outside of Jerusalem (c.f., Isaiah earlier had a prophecy that could be interpreted in that light in Is. 19:19, 21; 19:23; Mal. 1:11 after Zephaniah).