Lenten Love #1

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is that of Jonah, and not because he gets swallowed by a big fish.  I love Jonah because it is all about forgiveness. Just a quick nickel and dime version.  Jonah gets called by God to go and preach to people whom he would consider his enemy.  He runs away, God pursues him, he changes his mind (because God can be pretty convincing), does as God asks, sees amazing results, and ends up really mad.  Go spend 15 minutes reading it and see how my version matches up.  

In the past, I’ve always read that story and placed myself in the character of Jonah, as one being called by God to go and preach. But as I read it this morning, with my mind and eyes on Ash Wednesday, I realized I have some commonalities with the people of Nineveh as well.  

Obviously the Ninevites were not living the way God wanted them to, hence the reason Jonah was called to the scene. Lent, especially Ash Wednesday, reminds us of our own brokenness and that we too do not live up to God’s expectation of us.  

Then we read that the king of Nineveh repented, using the sign and symbol of ashes to demonstrate that repentance.  Many of us will where ashes on foreheads today, not to point to our own piety, but rather to acknowledge that we came from dust and knowing we are finite beings, we will one day return to such a state.  Because of this, we remember our reliance upon God.

And lastly, like the Ninevites, we have been spared.  Sin and death no longer have the last word.  Through the journey that Jesus took, as he turned his face to Jerusalem and began the long walk to the cross, and because of his self-sacrificial love for all humanity in which he laid his life down, we have been offered grace that defies logic.  (Remember, Jonah couldn’t understand why God would forgive ‘those people’.)

During this Lenten season, I hope that we begin to experience all the ways God loves us in this world and that we would maybe lay aside our need to understand everything and live into the illogical grace that is God’s love.  God loves you.  Never forget that.

Blessings,

Brad