I love reading and stories of all kinds as you may know. The other day I was reading a fiction book that had a great story line and fantastic (happy) ending and for some reason the story of Jonah in the Bible came to mind. I was thinking about how sad it was that we don’t know how his story ends; I’m definitely not a huge fan of cliffhanger endings unless there’s a next book to jump into to find out how it really (happily and properly) ends. I like stories with both happy endings and with tidy bows, and Jonah doesn’t have this because his story ends with him upset with God and God with him because of his consistent focus on what he wants and what’s going on in his life and not about the people of Nineveh or what God’s plans are.
But the more I thought about it, there is a huge happy ending and a big bow on the story for the people of Nineveh. They definitely got a happy ending because God forcibly persuaded Jonah to get there and deliver His message, and warned them how unhappy God was with them and if they didn’t change their ways they and their city would be destroyed. They took the message to heart, repented “from greatest to least” (Jonah 3:5), and God had mercy on them and didn’t follow through on his destruction threat.
And then I thought about how as much as the book is titled “Jonah” and it is about this part of his life, if we’re focused more on Jonah in the story and not the victory God and the people of Nineveh, are we focused on the wrong thing or not giving that aspect of the story enough attention? If so, what else are we missing or ignoring or not clearly seeing in our lives? I’ve written plenty on the story of Jonah and the many ways we can personally identify with him in different situations of our lives and how much we can learn from him about listening to and obeying God, and I think that’s often the focus of devotionals and other spiritual media because it is so at odds with many of the other greats in the Bible and we can learn a lot from Jonah about what not to do in our lives. But we should never ignore or gloss over the fact that there was a huge victory and 120,000 people’s lives were saved because they heard the message Jonah reluctantly delivered.
So this week I encourage you to ask God to reveal in your life what you might be blind to or not giving the attention it should be given or focusing on the issue or challenge instead of celebrating the victory, and be more willing than Jonah to follow that path and realign your focus.