Wednesday, October 8, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
On the road again
For the next week or so devotions will be sporadic, because we’re traveling again, from Texas to Evansville to Champaign to Bloomington to Urbana to Springfield. And then home again home again jiggety-jig.
Jonah’s travels took him west, and then underwater, then back home and east to Nineveh. I have the sense he traveled alone. Perhaps he was a loner the rest of the time, too. Prophets often are; their voice is not the voice of the shopkeepers or the accountants or the IT folks. They represent God, whose voice is not also soft and gentle.
The great thing about the book of Jonah is that it depends on sharing what God said to Jonah all along the journey. Their conversation shows us how to relate to God, and how to talk with Him, and how He talks with us.
Jonah was greatly displeased
and became angry that God did not carry out the evil
he threatened against Nineveh.
He prayed, “I beseech you, LORD,
is not this what I said while I was still in my own country?
This is why I fled at first to Tarshish.
I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God,
slow to anger, rich in clemency, loath to punish.
And now, LORD, please take my life from me;
for it is better for me to die than to live.”
But the LORD asked, “Have you reason to be angry?”
Jonah was convinced he had every right. God didn’t waste time giving him another chance to see things His way.
Jonah then left the city for a place to the east of it,
where he built himself a hut and waited under it in the shade,
to see what would happen to the city.
And when the LORD God provided a gourd plant
that grew up over Jonah’s head,
giving shade that relieved him of any discomfort,
Jonah was very happy over the plant.
But the next morning at dawn
God sent a worm that attacked the plant,
so that it withered.
And when the sun arose, God sent a burning east wind;
and the sun beat upon Jonah’s head till he became faint.
Then Jonah asked for death, saying,
“I would be better off dead than alive.”
But God said to Jonah,
“Have you reason to be angry over the plant?”
Yes! I do! Stubborn old man with a white beard, frowning into his plate, spending too much time alone with himself and not enough with God. Jonah’s self-confidence pushed up against God. Who do you think wins this round?
“I have reason to be angry,” Jonah answered, “angry enough to die.”
Then the LORD said,
“You are concerned over the plant which cost you no labor
and which you did not raise;
it came up in one night and in one night it perished.
And should I not be concerned over Nineveh, the great city,
in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons
who cannot distinguish their right hand from their left,
not to mention the many cattle?”
Jonah needed the Lord’s Prayer, but Jesus was still a thousand years in the future, with his simple swiss-army-knife prayer that covers all the bases.
Our Father who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
(Jonah 4, Psalm 86, Romans 8, Luke 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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