Jonah's Gourd & Deadly Statistics

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
"The Lord provided" Jonah 4:6,7,8

While in the fish's belly, Jonah sang the praises of a merciful and forgiving God. Once freed from the fish, he went his merry way, ignoring Nineveh's need until God's second call.

After the Ninevites repented, the man who had earlier praised God for his mercy was now so angry that he said he wanted to die. But God wanted Jonah to live, and learn. Rather than let Jonah die, God provided him comfort--a vine to shade him from the sun. And once Jonah was comfortable, God kindly provided a worm to kill the vine. And lest Jonah still missed the message, God provided a scorching wind, and a glaring sun to bake Jonah's bald head. But rather than repent, Jonah complained that he was again angry enough to die--because God had not spared the vine. And the book ends with God's patient remonstrance, "If you care for the vine, how much more do I care for the 120,000 people of Nineveh, and the cattle?"

How easily Jonah took for granted his own deliverance and comforts, yet had zero compassion for others. No wonder Christ urged us to "treat others as ourselves." But what does it take for me to really see others "as myself?"

Deadly Statistics. The news bombards us daily with so many disasters that we cannot cope, and we shut it out, becoming spectators but not participants, and atrocities in Afghanistan are no more real to us than a Tom Cruise movie. Eichmann, Hitler's right hand man, was asked if the world would not notice the disappearance of millions of Jews after the war. He replied, "A hundred dead is a catastrophe. A million dead is a statistic."

Today, not only are the "million dead" a statistic, but so are the 100 dead, and the suffering family next door. Does our own vine need to be destroyed in order for us to see others as ourselves?

A few years ago I saw a magazine article with dozens of photos of war-torn Serbia. I was of course horrified, but Serbia is far away, and the peoples so different. I felt compassion, but it was a comfortable compassion, not at all the same grief that I'd have felt had it been someone I knew personally. And then I saw a photo of a blond-haired boy of about five, sobbing beside his dead parents. He looked just like my own son, and instantly, I was overwhelmed with grief. Fora few moments that child was my child, and I was no longer spectator but participant. That one photograph did much to further open my mind and heart to the needs around me and to the reality that those people are indeed me.

Of course, I can't influence what is happening in Serbia, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, but I can touch a life here in Xiamen, and I daily remind myself (and I do need daily reminding) to treat those around me as I would myself--or my own son. Let us learn to truly see, and serve, those around us, lest our own vine perish,as Meyer relates below.

F.B. Meyer, in "Our Daily Homily (London, 1894), wrote of Jonah's "The Lord prepared":

This book is full of this word prepared. We are told that the Lord prepared a great fish, a gourd, a worm, and a sultry east wind.

HE PREPARES THE FISH (chap. 1.17) When we are at our wits' end, apparently going to destruction, He interposes and arrests our progress, and brings us back again to Himself.

HE PRPARES THE GOURD, that is may come up to be a shadow to our heads, and deliver us from our evil case.

The gourd of friendship, of property, of some cherished and successful achievement. Ah, how glad we are for these gourds; though not always sufficiently quick to attribute them to the loving providen of our Heavenly Father.

HE PREPARES THE WORM, AND THE EAST WIND. Jonah would have regarded Nineveh's destruction with equanimity, whilst he mourned over his gourd; and there was no way of awakening him to the true state of the case than by letting worm and east wind do their work. He must be taught that what the gourd was to himself, Nineveh was to God. Yea, it was more; because God had laboured for it, and made it to grow through long centuries (ver.11).

How often our gourds are allowed to perish, to teach us these deep lessons. In spite of all we can do to keep them green, their leaves turn more and more sere and yellow, until they droop and die. And when they lie prone in the dust, the east wind is let forth from the Almighty hand--the malign breath from which the gourd would have delivered us...

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