The Lord’s Gentle Patience
Jonah 4:4
And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?”
Jonah is burning with hate and rage at the Lord because of the Lord’s patient mercy.
The irony is that Jonah is too blind to be able to see how the Lord is being patiently merciful with him!
Throughout this final chapter, the Lord responds to Jonah’s petulance with simple, gracious questions. The point of those questions is to help Jonah realize his errors so he can turn around before it’s too late.
God’s mercy is not an end in itself, it is the means to the end. The end is life with God, and the Lord uses mercy to be able to win people back from death to life. Here, God is still trying to win back Jonah. (Whether he succeeds or not is an open question, since the book doesn’t tell us.)
I love that gentle question:
“Do you do well to be angry?”
The Lord is doing whatever he can to try to break through Jonah’s hard heart.
God gives up on nobody.
Which means neither should we.
In light of all the anger and hatred that has resulted from Charlie Kirk’s assassination, whom should you be praying for? Who needs to know the mercy and love of God?
