God is asking: “Can you learn to see through my eyes?”

 

In the kingdom of God we find, through stories like Jonah, that God usually doesn’t follow our set of rule and of our views of how life “should” be.

Clearly, God is not limited to our particular mind-set. 

We learn early in our lives to demand what we call “fair.”

By the of age two we know how to stand our ground when things seem “unfair.”

When we get older, and unfairnesses are larger, we take to the streets to strike against the injustice.  We gather around others who think the same way we do and stand firmly together resolving to make it “right.”   To make it “fair” according to our way of thinking.

We know of these movements all to well in todays world. 

The question I have is: What, or who, constitutes fair?

What Jonah thought was fair; was not what God thought was fair.

This little story, in the Middle of the Old Testament, bids us to consider: What does this story tell us about ourselves?  What does it expose about our presumptions on what is fair and good, unfair and bad.

God was intending to change Jonah’s heart.

                                                               It clearly didn’t work.

Can it work for you and me?

When someone hurts us; when someone disagrees with what we feel strongly about.  We want them to stop.  We want God on our side.

And God response is:  I will do what I know is best.

I will give what I choose to give.

And forgive whom I choose to forgive.

The question of the century:  Should God not be concerned about others?

You see, it is not about fair or fairness.  It is about whether or not we are concerned about others as well. 

The story about Jonah challenges us to examine our thinking, check our habits and adjust our behavior.

It challenges us to examine our faith in Jesus The Christ.

It challenges us to examine the ways we listen, understand and live God’s word.

How does what we know, think and act upon frame how we become apart of God’s way of thinking and doing?

Does our understanding of God — our faith — guide our practices, our habits, our ways of interacting and speaking with each other?

Some of you might claim: God’s kingdom, by human standards, is irrelevant, unrealistic and it simply not fair. Because God is so extremely generous and forgiving to everyone equally.  

And those other people “don’t deserve it.”   “Not they way they act.”

Here is the question I think God is asking all of humanity:  

“Can you learn to see through my eyes?”