I just wrapped up a preaching series called The Runaway: Story of a man named Jonah. I love the story of Jonah but it is definately not a kids story, which many have sadly turned it into. If you read through the book you realize that Jonah's attitude is horrible throughout the entire story. Count how many times he says he wants to die, it is ridiculous!
In Chapter four of Jonah he goes outside the city and sits and waits to see if God will destroy the city. He is hopeful God will wipe out the Ninevites. While he is waiting, God causes a plant to grow to give Jonah shade against the hot middle eastern sun. Yet during the night God causes the plant to wither and during the day sends a hot east wind to blow into Jonah's world.
Jonah is furious, so furious that of course HE WANTS TO DIE! He doesn't care about what is happening in Ninevah, he just cares about his own comfort. He is complaining because his little "Destruction of Ninevah" one man party isn't comfortable enough.
Jonah has totally lost perspective! People in Ninevah have been spared. Jonah is mad because he is too hot????
Reminds me of a story I read about a Carnival Cruise that went bad a few years ago.
The ship with nearly 5,000 people on board became stranded off of the coast of California and it took 3 days to tow it back to San Diego. Once the regular food ran out Spam, pop-tarts and crab meat was airlifted in.
The worst hardships people had to endure were brushing their teeth with bottled water, showering in the dark, and waiting in line for food. Not too bad. I spent malmost 19 years as a youth pastor doing all those on a regular basis. Ha, Ha.
If you listened to the interviews passengers gave when they arrived at port you would have thought they were on a ship, filled with zombies, that had struck an iceberg and the band was on the deck playing “stairway to heaven” as the ship was going down!
All the passengers also knew Carnival was going to reimburse them for that cruise, all travel costs getting to and from the ship, nullified all expenses they had incurred on ship before fire, including casino losses and gift shop purchases. Free Hotel rooms and food if they wanted to stay a week in San Diego and give them an additional cruise on top of all that!!!
Ryan Harlan a little kid was interviewed and he said, “A lot of things went wrong, but it was really fun and I made some new friends.”
I don't know about you but I think I would have taken the small inconveniances, and all those perks, even the SPAM.
I hope I would have had the same PERSPECTIVE as Ryan Harlan instead of that boat full of Jonahs!
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