By David ReayMonday 29 Jul 2019LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 2 minutes
The Lord gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.”
But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the Lord by sailing to Tarshish. (NLT)
A story has been told of an American footballer who caught hold of a ball thrown to him and sped like a gazelle to the touchdown zone. He was taken aback when his teammates didn’t rush to congratulate him. Problem was that he had run to the wrong end and actually added to the other team’s score.
Some of us do take wrong turns in life, usually not as spectacular as that. But Jonah, when he took a wrong turn, didn’t mess around. Told to go to Nineveh, which was roughly east of where he was, he instead went to Tarsish, which was due west on the coast of what we know as Spain.
We only know why he did it later on in the story. Nineveh was a pretty big city of the fearsome Assyrian empire. He would be venturing into deep enemy territory. Though we come to see that it wasn’t just fear that caused him to flee, but the thought of such wicked people being given a chance to get right with his God.
We can offer all sorts of reasons for disobeying God. Fear of what might be involved, avoidance of uncomfortable change, sheer selfishness, unwillingness to give up what is valuable to us. We may disguise our disobedience by seeing it as a problem of guidance: not knowing what God wants us to do. But so often we are like Jonah. We know what God wants us to do but we just don’t want to do it. And so like Jonah, we try to escape from the inescapable God.
Blessings
David