But God
But God has the Right Perspective.
We try to participate acts of kindness for others as a way to be generous and thoughtful, but also to show the love of God. Sometimes, we may not want to. My book, “But God, Getting to Know Your Bridegroom in the Old Testament”, has a good lesson on this found in the testimony of Jonah. Here is the excerpt:
“But God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?’ ‘It is,’ he said.
“And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.’” (Jonah 4:9 NIV, emphasis added).
In the whale, Jonah thought he was going to die (Jonah 2:7), BUT GOD saved him.
Some say he did die as Jonah 2:3 states he was praying from the belly of Sheol, the land of the dead. After he spoke to Nineveh and heard God was going to spare them, Jonah was so mad that, in the heat of the moment, he wished he would die (Jonah 4:3).
Now, in the heat of the sun, Jonah again said he wished he were dead. Jonah had very extreme emotions. God tried to help Jonah self-check his feelings by asking him if it was right for him to be so angry. Jonah had received a moment of happiness with the vine of the plant allowing him some shade, and then once it was gone, he was mad again. He was so caught up in his own comfort that he did not see the bigger picture that people could have died in not-so-comfortable conditions. He was happy about his deliverance from a whale, but not happy about Nineveh’s deliverance (Jonah 2:9-10).
Jonah was having severe difficulties. He was allowing bitterness to root in his heart against the people of Nineveh (who were Assyrians) and wanted God to destroy them.
Jonah was displacing his anger wrongly, thinking he had a right to be angry at God (Jonah 4:1). The initial root of the matter had still not been dealt with, and so God used the plant to bring the subject up to get some perspective on the issue. There were more than 120,000 people who needed just one word from Jonah to straighten up. God reminded Jonah that those people being saved, along with livestock, were more important than a plant! Jonah should not have been mad over a plant dying, but the fact that thousands of human beings almost died! Jonah’s perspective was all wrong because of his extreme contempt towards the Assyrians.
In our BUT GOD verse, we see that God asked Jonah this question to invoke a self evaluation. It was the same as when God asked Adam, “Where are you?” after Adam and Eve sinned and they hid in the Garden (Gen 3:9). It was not because He did not know where they were. God knows, but asks questions to get us to talk to Him so that we can sort through things together. A different angle on the question could be seen as God asking, “Where are you—spiritually?” because spiritually, Adam had just sinned, and now there was a separation. Spiritually, Jonah had lost sight of the reason for his calling and his anger was not coming from the right perspective. It was not like the prophet, Ezekiel, who was angry about the nation of Israel sinning and going against God’s instructions. Jonah’s anger was because God chose to accept Nineveh’s repentance and the plant beside Jonah dying just added to his emotional outburst.
God always wants to redeem people (1 Tim 2:3-5) and wants His bride (the church) to point to the Redeemer Himself (Jesus) . Who are we to decide who has the right to be saved and who does not? It says in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and are falling short”. If you lay aside your old ways and put on a “new self,” change on the inside can occur (Eph 4:22-24), and then you become a “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). One who is worthy of being “brought near” to God Himself through the blood of our Bridegroom, Jesus (Eph 2:11-13)!
Is not Jonah’s reaction just like ours today? We get all hot and bothered over various circumstances and say irrational comments that later need to be dealt with. It is not until we remove ourselves from the situation that we start to look at things differently.
Perspective is key, and we would be wise not to blow up in anger so quickly because things did not go the way we wanted it to. Reality starts to set in once we actually deal with the “root” of the issue and not blame the “vine.”
My friend, Melanie, taught me this quick lesson on perspective I would like to end with.
If you put your hand directly in front of your eyeballs, you probably will see some blurry fingers. That is what our perspective is when we are in the thick of a situation. Now, if you move your hand back a couple of inches, you probably can see it more clearly.
Similarly, if some time passes in our situation, we might see things more clearly. Lastly, if you stretch your arm all the way out and look at your hand in the distance, you will see your whole arm and hand in relationship to the rest of the body and the space around you. That is God’s perspective—the whole time. We do not know what the surrounding circumstances are for the situation we are in, but our Father in Heaven does.
We can be certain He sees the whole picture from the right perspective from the very beginning! And He is sent His Son Jesus, our Bridegroom, to redeem us so that we can be delivered just like the people of Nineveh, we all get a chance from His perspective.
Tina Miller, author of the book “But God” which can be found on Amazon
