[Continued from Musings on Jonah, Part One: Is it right for you to be angry?]
Two things I love most from this passage: God is always teaching us and God is always providing for us.
He is teaching Jonah here. He used the example of the plant that made Jonah so happy when it kept the sun off of his head to show Jonah how much more love God had for all of these people – and animals! – than Jonah could have possibly had for the here-one-day-gone-the-next plant. How could Jonah have argued with this loving, truthful answer from God?
God was also providing for Jonah throughout this whole story. Let’s look at all of the components of this story that God provided: the storm, the big fish, the return of Jonah onto dry land from inside of the big fish, the plant that sheltered Jonah, the worm that chewed the plant until it withered, and the scorching east wind.
Some of these provisions are happy and wonderful (the leafy plant that Jonah loved?), while others are not what you and I would call lovely provisions (a big fish to swallow Jonah? A worm to eat the plant? A scorching wind?). But we can see here in hindsight that God was, in fact, providing what Jonah needed. Not necessarily what Jonah wanted, but what he needed in order to learn what God was trying to teach him.
These provisions, this teaching – it was all done in love. It didn’t always feel like love, but it was motivated by love and allowed by a God who could be trusted to work all things out according to His superior wisdom. And God was so patient with Jonah. He knew that some of these tougher provisions would make Jonah angry.
From what we can see in this passage, God was not even angry with Jonah for being angry with Him. God’s responses are calm, loving, and patient. God teaches, God provides, and God can handle our anger. Sometimes He will convict us of holding onto unjustified anger or even justified anger because He knows that anger can become so detrimental to our lives.
Those of us who have heard these verses I shared earlier in the post about anger our whole lives sometimes feel guilty when we feel angry, so we hold in our anger because we don’t have a proper place to put it. That’s why I love how honest Jonah was here with God. He could have shoved his anger deep inside and given the “correct” answer: no, I don’t have the right to be angry.
But he didn’t. Jonah was honest with God, and God was patient with Jonah’s anger. He was compassionate toward this human emotion of anger. God saw where Jonah was, and He lovingly guided him to where he should be. And God is understanding toward us in our anger as well.
Did Jonah have a right to be angry about God giving grace to the Ninevites?
Did Jonah have a right to be angry about the plant?
Do I have a right to be angry at whatever has offended me most recently?
Do you?
Sometimes the answer is no, and sometimes it is yes. Regardless, we can rest assured that we can take our emotions to God in prayer. He is not afraid of our emotions, even the less lovely ones.
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