Tag: Following Jesus

Digging in Deeper: Jonah 4:1-3

Leave a comment

“Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. He prayed to the Lord: ‘Please, Lord, isn’t this what I thought while I was still in my own country? That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster. And now, Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever gotten mad about something God did? That’s kind of an odd question, I’ll grant you, but think about it for a minute. Maybe God did something good for someone you deemed undeserving. Perhaps He allowed someone you love to go through a season of suffering or die. It could be that someone else didn’t get what you thought they deserved for something they had done. Whatever it was, there are times in our lives when we get mad at God. Jonah certainly was here. What do we do in these times?

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Jonah 3:10

Leave a comment

“God saw their actions — that they had turned from their evil ways — so God relented from the disaster he had threatened them with. And he did not do it.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the greatest Christmas movies of all time (after Die Hard) is Home Alone. And whether you agree with me or not, it is a fact that it’s the third highest grossing Christmas movie ever (behind the recent remake of The Grinch at number two and Iron Man 3 running away with the top spot). In any event, one of my favorite scenes comes right at the very end when Kevin walks downstairs Christmas morning and finds his mom standing there. She apologizes earnestly for their forgetting him when they left on vacation and there’s this moment where it looks like he’s deciding whether to forgive her or not. Then he breaks into a big grin and everybody lives happily ever after (except the bad guys). That scene could have been inspired by what happens here in Jonah.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Jonah 3:1-3a

Leave a comment

“The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: ‘Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you.’ Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord’s command.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the parenting books I read early on in this journey was Have a New Kid by Friday by Kevin Leman. Leman is a good writer and his sense of humor made it a fun read, but there was one idea that has really stuck with me over the years. The principle goes like this: B can’t happen until A does. The idea is that, if you’ve asked your kids to do something you want or need them to do (A), they can’t do whatever it is they might want to do (B) until they’ve accomplished A. We see a bit of this on the display in Jonah’s life right here.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Jonah 2:2

Leave a comment

“I called to the Lord in my distress, and he answered me. I cried out for help from deep inside Sheol; you heard my voice.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

Are you the kind of person who calls for help before you break something or after it’s already shattered into pieces? It’s not just a matter of pride that determines how far you go into something you can’t do before you wave the help flag. Sometimes it’s a matter of information. For Jonah here, it was a simple matter of the fact that he didn’t have any other options. The question is, though, did he really mean it?

Read the rest…

Keep Seeking

2 Comments

Christmas is done. We’ve made it. But what now? The days leading up to Christmas, while often busy, are also joy-filled in a way many other times of the year aren’t. But once we get to the other side of Christmas, how do we keep from running smack into the emotional letdown we so often feel? This week and next as we get started on a brand new year, a brand new decade, we’re going to talk about how to do just that in a short run series called, After Christmas. Thanks for reading.

Keep Seeking

So here we are on the other side of the big day. Did anybody wake up Thursday morning and think, “Now what?” I mean, Wednesday we were all like, “Ho, ho, ho!” But Thursday? It was perhaps more like, “Oh, oh, oh…” There’s just something about the day after a big holiday like Christmas that feels like a bit of a letdown, isn’t there?

Read the rest…