Petulance
Ephraim has become like a dove,
Silly and without sense. Hosea 7:11
Read Jonah 4
This petulant man, Jonah, and his comic situation — where does he connect with me? I suppose he exposes the real weirdness you arrive at if you structure your life around a self-centred vision, a self-centred ethic. It may be how our culture is doing it, but it is no vision. It is no ethic. God has put me in a world far bigger than myself. His love is out there in it. I am to find myself out there. God is inviting me to participate in that love, to centre my world beyond myself. I sit here, and my guess is that this night I can put my finger on some trivial frustration that got me all het up today. Trivial. God’s response is to hold up a mirror to me in this story: ‘I sent a worm to wither a single plant shading Jonah. He cared more for that than for a multitude of people and all their animals! Now I’m giving you a chance to have a good laugh at yourself, because you’re being a plain silly dove.’ Jonah means dove.
Lord of the whole earth, of every man, woman and child, of their cultures and their honest livings, of creatures and plants and wonders of the world, whether people visit them or not, Lord of the church in every place, I thank you for Jonah. I see his silliness. I’m sure you want me to see it. You make me sane when I see it. You cultivate in me a healthy shame. You expand my vision. I think you are growing my heart. I think you are shifting me from where I tend to sit, accompanied by selfishness and self-pity. And this night I am ready to make a beginning, to pray for the world beyond me, and to follow your lead into it. I shall meet you there, beyond my little circle.