April 2
Jonah
Now the word
of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry
out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the
presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish;
so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from
the presence of the Lord.
Jonah 1:1-3
Ahhh, Jonah.
I was preaching one week and used Jonah
as my main text. The congregation knew
that he was swallowed by a fish…or a whale…or some sort of large sea
creature. They also knew that Veggie
Tales had done an adaptation of Jonah’s story where the Ninevites showed their
cruelty and brokenness by slapping each other with large fish and saying, “Ha
ha ha,” in tiny French Pea accents. No
one took his story too seriously, after all what can you glean from a story
about a racist prophet who tries to get away from God so that a city would not
be saved but instead is swallowed by a fish and spit up on the beach?
As it turns
out…a lot. Jonah actually appears
earlier in Scripture. He is the
successor to Elisha in 2nd Kings, the prophet of the Lord who
counsels the throne on how to proceed in order to receive God’s blessings. And during his time as prophet, Israel
thrives. Israel was located between two
major empires: Egypt to the South and Persia to the North. Trade flowed through Israel and money poured
into their nation. Borders expanded
which meant there were battles being won and Jonah was an integral part of it
all. The promised Kingdom of God was
growing before his eyes and ready to take major steps onto the world stage.
The biggest
threat to the Kingdom was from Assyria in the North; God told Elijah that
judgement would come from the king of Assyria against the Israelites who served
other gods. One of the core cities of
Assyria was Nineveh. Its destruction
would only be positive for the Jews and Jonah knew that. He heard the call to preach repentance and
deliverance to the Ninevites as a direct threat to Isreal’s national
security. See, Jonah was a patriot. He loved his people and his country and had
been called to speak God’s words for the good of his nation and he embraced his
role. Then his call changed and he was
sent to save the enemy of his people…and he abandoned everything that he
was. He rejected God and fled to the
other side of the world, choosing to be a patriot instead of a prophet.
Jonah’s big
mistake, other than thinking that he could outrun the Almighty, was that he
confused the tools that he had been given for his identity. His calling and equipping to be a prophet,
his status as an Israelite, his money and resources, even his opportunities as
a man in a patriarchal society…all these were tools that Jonah had received to
accomplish the tasks that God had set before him. None of them touched on the core part of his
identity: Child of God. Jonah had value and purpose before he
received any of those tools. He would have
value and purpose after they had all been taken away. He saw himself as a champion of Israel and
when God’s call contradicted what he held as his identity, Jonah’s world fell
apart and he ran.
Our identity
is not our nationality. It is not our
ethnicity. It is not the language that
we speak or how educated we are or our profession. Our identity is that we are children of God,
created by our Heavenly Father to be in relationship with him here on Earth and
to join Him in Eternity. Everything else
is a tool that we have been given in order to partner with Him in our time here
on Earth.
Included in
that toolbox, we find the tool labelled, “Special Needs Parent.” It is the smart phone of skills and knowledge
and passions that you carry with you everywhere and use for everything. It defines your days; it is the first thing
that you reach for in the mornings and the last thing that you let go of at
night. You have been developing this for
years, decades even, and it is hard to imagine life without it.
It is just a
tool. It is not who you are. You are a child of God, crafted by the
Almighty to be in relationship with Him now and forever. Your time on Earth will involve a lot of
“Special Needs Parent” things, but that is not your identity. That is not the core of who you are and why
you exist. Those are just some of the
tools that you have been given in order to help make the world a better
place. You are a child of God…everything
else flows from there.
A moment to reflect:
Who are you aside from being the
Parent of a Special Needs Kid?
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