March 31st

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 2^nd 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?