August, 4, 2012
Jonah 1:1 the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai:
2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before
me.” 3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where
he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and
sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord."
A great reflection for our teacher Janice as she shared the story with the beginner's class:
"An obvious lesson from the book of Jonah is in its teaching of the mercy of God. There is mercy of God to Nineveh, Jonah himself and also
the pagan sailors. All were recipients of God’s mercy. We need to go and preach and we need to obey
God’s word. Jonah’s obedience was followed by
the outpouring of God’s power. How great
is God’s mercy? As the hymn goes:
"There's a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea.”
But even that is not wide enough. The real
measure of the wideness of the mercy of God is that of the outstretched arms of
the Lord Jesus Christ as He hung on the cross to die for our salvation. That is
the wideness of God’s mercy. That is the measure of the length to which the
love of God will go.
Many of us may not know that the book ends with a
question, in order that each one who reads it might ask himself or herself
the same question…….How can we, who have known that mercy and benefited from
it, be less than merciful to others? How can we do less than love them and
carry the gospel to them with all our strength?"
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