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CAN GOD’S COMPASSION BE QUANTIFIED? (JONAH 4:1-11)

REFLECTION

Our theme for today’s reflection is ‘Can God’s compassion be quantified?’ Compassion means sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. Jonah was sent to deliver the message of repentance and salvation to the people of Nineveh in order to avert their destruction by God. Initially, Jonah refused to go on the mission because it was his desire for the people of Nineveh to be destroyed because of their sinful ways. However Jonah went to deliver the message and the people repented, “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that He had said he would do to them, and He did not do it” (Jonah 3:10)

The key lesson of today’s reflection is that human being’s compassion can be quantified and selective but God does not quantify His compassion towards human beings. We are told, “But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. ² He prayed to the LORD, “Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. ³ Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” ⁴ But the LORD replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?” (Jonah 4:1-4) Jonah was a Jew and will surely deliver the message of repentance to his people without questioning God’s generosity and compassion, However, Jonah was not happy that God chose to save a gentile nation and the fact that he had to be the one to go on that mission. Sometimes we think that some people deserve to die or suffer because of their sins, in fact, we do not dream of God saving these wicked ones, yet Jesus teaches us that “,..there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents” (Luke 15:10). Again, for God to show that His compassion cannot be quantified, God said to Jonah “…you pity the plant, for which you did not labour, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:10-11) My dear friend, human beings may be selective in being compassionate but God is compassionate to all, Nineveh had a choice to make, they had the choice to either accept God’s forgiveness and compassion or to remain unrepentant and face the consequences thereof, which is destruction.

Beloved in the Lord, Christians must understand that it is not our duty to determine who will go to hell and who deserves to go to heaven. That is God’s decision to make. We are simply to avail ourselves to be used by God the instruments of transformation in the hands of God so that our brothers and sisters who are still beyond the walls of salvation will be saved. The Church represents Christ and must be an entity of compassion always welcoming all and sundry with the unconditional love of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

In summary, we have discovered that human beings’ compassion can be quantified and selective but God does not quantify His compassion towards human beings. Let us always show compassion and be guided by Jesus’s words, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Shalom

PRAYER 

COMPASSIONATE LORD, MAY WE ALWAYS BEAR YOUR IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF LOVE AND COMPASSION TO FULFILL OUR MISSION OF SAVING THE PERISHING AND THE DYING IN THE WORLD.

Jean-Paul Agidi (Rev)