D 1, Jonah: Warnings for the sinful deed and blessings for the meek

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Blogging about what I read could potentially be my comeback blog post after leaving the blogging community for nearly 5 years. Thank you readers for your interest and hopefully you’ll gain something from this blog post.

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“Warnings for the sinful deed and blessings for the meek”

The story of Jonah is well heard by every Christian born child. Sitting in Sunday school listening to our Sunday school teacher, we listened to the story of this man who disobeyed God and ran away, only to be punished and swallowed by a giant whale and sitting in his stomach for 3 long days (I wonder whats for dinner during that 3 dreadful days?). Later on getting spit out when he confesses his wrong doing, and grudgingly works his way to Nineveh, Capital of Assyria, to warn of God’s punishment to the people unless changes are made.

And we have Joel, whose background was mostly untold, and was God’s “minor prophet” who walks up to the people of Judah to prophesize of a devastating locust plague. He sees this plague as a sign of God's judgment and warned that unless the people returned to the Lord they would face even greater judgment on the day of the Lord.

As God sent both these men to be his messengers and warn His people I would like to think this shows that he always has an alternative plan behind every one of these grave warnings.
God did not carry out his plan of destruction over the city of Nineveh when the people repented and had a change of heart; he promised the people of Judah a “great blessing” that would more than repay "the years the locusts have eaten" to those who changed.

Using the analogy of a father with his child, the father has the right to teach his child what is right and wrong, to punish (or send his child to the ‘naughty corner’) his child when a misdeed has been done, and to reward them when they apologize and attempt very hard to be on ‘best behaviour’.

The two stories remind me that God is sovereign over everything, he is a father to us all, he teaches us what we need, he warns and punishes us when we sin, and he blesses us with greatness when we repent and walk closer to his word.

- On behalf of Emily Khong -