For me one of the greatest love stories ever written is the book of Jonah (in the Bible). The way God pursues Jonah, when he could have just found someone easier to deal with, melts my heart.
When talking about this story, our attention mostly goes to Nineveh and how God was so anxious to save its people from their own self-destructive ways. But was Jonah merely the means to accomplishing that? Or was he the ultimate purpose of God?
If you think about it, if God was merely looking for someone, anyone, to accomplish the “task,” I wonder why he chose to settle for Jonah. I mean, surely there must have been someone a little more willing. The dude clearly couldn’t care less about the salvation of the people of Nineveh - in fact, he was against it heart and soul - and was literally running away in the opposite direction. Last resort, God could have gone himself and spoken to the people. The real question, then, is why God was so insistent that it be him. So insistent, in fact, that he bothered to stir up the seas and create a huge storm so that Jonah would end up in the sea, then summoned a whale to swallow him up and keep him alive. And even after Jonah finally got off his butt and went to Nineveh to get his mission over with, God still wasn’t satisfied. He grew a plant to serve Jonah as a shade from the sun, then summoned a worm to eat it up. All of this so that he can have a conversation with him and reason with him, to get him to hear his heart and understand his perspective. (Isn’t it just so heartwarming how eagerly God wants Jonah to understand him?) Then when the plant was all withered away and Jonah was rather grumpy, God asked him, twice, if it was right for Jonah to be angry. When Jonah answered in the affirmative, God said the following, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left - and also many animals?”
The answer, then, to why it just had to be Jonah, an answer which took me years to understand and yet changed my life, is simply this: for Jonah's sake. He didn’t need Jonah to do him a favor; he was going to save Nineveh whether or not Jonah cooperated. In fact, I don't think God ever intended to punish Nineveh, just as he never intended to let any harm come to Jonah. But he wanted Jonah to become compassionate, to learn to love, and to enjoy the absolute satisfaction of helping others. Just as C.S. Lewis once said, "The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
The words we would probably choose to describe Jonah would be arrogant, selfish, ungrateful, maybe even despicable. And most likely we’d be right. But that was no reason for God to stop loving him or to give up on him. He wanted him to become a better person for his own sake; God didn't have a problem, he already loved him as much as it is possible to love another soul. For me this whole book is just a love story. (And if you haven’t read it yet, please do, it’s only 4 chapters!)
And as a vegetarian, I just can't pass up the opportunity to mention how in the end, when God is reasoning with Jonah and trying to make him realize how important those people are to him, he also mentions the animals. God valued the animals too! Okay, now that it's out there and you know, I feel better.
