Sunday Stretch: Vol. 48

Start off your week with a grounded take on Bible, prayer, the world, and your life ...

Hi Readers,

Our Bible passages this week are about the magnitude of grace, and about how we often make grace much smaller than God intends it to be.

I read these passages, and they ring true in a way that kind of makes you cringe a bit internally - especially if you’re a high-responsibility, occasionally over-functioning person like myself. The last line of our Gospel text for today always reverberates in my mind long after I read it. Is it possible that I am angry because God is generous?

And - have I failed to fully experience God’s generosity myself, because I am too hard on myself, or too impatient, or too critical?

Fortunately, our world is full of vibrant examples of the largeness and wonder of God’s grace and beauty. I saw it this week in Minnesota, as our leaves magically began to turn brilliant shades of orange, red, and yellow. It’s just almost impossibly beautiful, arresting in a way that makes you stop and notice, even in the busyness of September.

That moment of noticing is a moment of letting Grace in. Not judging it or earning it or managing it or using it to the fullest but just experiencing it, and letting it be an unearned and generous gift to the world.

Bible Stories

Jonah 3:10-4:11

Jonah 3:10   When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Jonah 4:1   But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.  ² He prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.  ³ And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”  ⁴ And the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”  ⁵ Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.

Jonah 4:6   The LORD God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush.  ⁷ But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered.  ⁸ When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

Jonah 4:9   But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.”  ¹⁰ Then the LORD said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night.  ¹¹ And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

You may have heard that the book of Jonah comes from a subset of biblical styles known as “wisdom literature,” and that similar stories to Jonah are found in other ancient near eastern texts. Wisdom literature functions almost like a fable or allegory - in that it uses a story to tell a broader point. Whether that means a prophet named Jonah was actually inside the belly of a large fish (did you think it was a whale, like I did growing up? The Hebrew actually indicates a large fish!) - the reason I share this is that it reminds me that this story of Jonah is a universal one, and this ending part of it, like so much of wisdom literature, is eminently practical and human - showing us the humanity and reality of the Bible, and God’s desire to talk directly and openly with human beings - often asking us questions to help us be introspective and see God’s message for our lives.

Questions to Ponder