Turn Around

“On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.’ The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. ‘…By the decree of the king and his nobles: …Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.’”
Jonah 3:4-5, 7-9

The sacred and solemn season of Lent was starting. Traditionally Lent is a time of introspection, prayer, and fasting. It is a time when we Christians reflect on our own shortcomings and try within our limited understanding to participate in Jesus’40 day wilderness experience and His later suffering. Contemplating on the season brought to mind the people of Nineveh and God’s call for them to turn around. 

Jonah didn’t want to go so he ended up having his own turn around encounter with God - but that is story for another week perhaps. The Ninevites were a wicked, wicked people and God it would seem was tired of hearing about all the bad stuff that was happening in the city and in the country surrounding it. Eventually Jonah shows up and basically tells them to get ready for the end of life as they know it because his God was mad and was going to take drastic action against them. 

The Lord, however, I believe really wanted the Nivevites to turn around, to change the way they were living - which is what He still wants from people today. As the people of Nineveh and their king had hoped God saw them turn around, saw their change of heart and showed His amazing compassion on them. 

Fast forward and Jesus is on the scene - His mission to show divine compassion on humanity; a compassion that is powered by grace and mercy. A compassion that when felt at the very core of a human heart, our human hearts, that it turns us around and sets us properly on the divine path our lives are meant to follow - a path that leads directly to the heart of an amazing God so filled with compassion, mercy, grace and love that He laid down His life so we could turn ours around.

Turn around, compassion is pursuing you - let Him catch you.

A Prayer
Father - Thank you for the compassion you show us each day. For those things in our lives that threaten to take us away from you, help us to turn around and then help us to show that same grace and mercy powered compassion to those around us. In the name of Jesus, Amen.