To hear you
Norah Summers
January 21, 2018
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Jonah 3: 1-5
1 Once again the Lord spoke to Jonah. 2 He said, “Go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to the people the message I have given you.” 3 So Jonah obeyed the Lord and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to walk through it. 4 Jonah started through the city, and after walking a whole day, he proclaimed, “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed!”
5 The people of Nineveh believed God's message. So they decided that everyone should fast, and all the people, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth to show that they had repented.
I remember a visiting American minister preaching about Jonah, and describing his journeyings thus, “He sure covered the territ-o-ry.”
We can hardly call Jonah’s route to Nineveh the “pretty way” but it was pretty circuitous, even allowing for the large fish, and a long way indeed – the city itself took three days to cross.
And Jonah’s inner wanderings weren’t much different. At first he set off in the opposite direction, and that is just how his mind was – firmly fixed in the opposite direction.
Lauren Child’s wonderful book “I will not ever never eat a tomato!” is one of the stories about Lola, a little girl who has her mind very firmly made up about what she likes and doesn’t like. In the end, of course, her mind is subtly changed, with the help of her brother Charlie.
We may never quite come to enjoy tomatoes or broccoli or whatever, but we can be open-minded about change. Many are the stories of people resisting for years a call to do something new – and by long and weary journeys ending up where they should have been in the first place.
Constant God,
forgive us
that we do not always hear, or heed, your still small voice.
You know us better than we know ourselves.
You know our every weakness,
our every reluctance,
our every deaf ear,
our every excuse.
You know too our every potential,
our every possibility of service,
our every inclination to do good,
our every kind and loving impulse.
Give us grace in this New Year
to hear you,
to trust and obey.
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