JONAH

On Father’s day Kel gave me a binder in which she compiled page after page of history about me. Some of them are things I have written over the years, others are things people have written either to me or about me. Why did she do this? Well, a few weeks before that in the midst of a one of the biggest “discussions” Kelly and I have had in our 14yrs of marriage, I told her that “I don’t know who I am anymore and what I do know I don’t like much”. (Why does it seem that things need to blow up before they start getting better?) Sometime after that discussion she went to work on my Father’s day present. To remind me of who I am-what has been spoken to me and over me. After I paged through it a name came to my mind, Jonah. We all know the story of Jonah: God called him to do something; he ran away and wound up in the belly of a big fish. He then decides to do what God wants and gets spit out on shore. We often kind of forget about the rest. Jonah goes and does what God asked of him and then Jonah gets mad and depressed that it turns out the way it did. You see Jonah had a different plan in mind and he got really upset with God when it did not turn out his way. I can kind of see Jonah’s point, he did ultimately do what God asked; he sacrificed, he said what God wanted him to say. But he had in his mind it was going to work out HIS way; but God had different plans. And for Jonah, those plans were hard to swallow. I get that. For some reason people think that if we do what God wants/asks it will turn out the way we/I want. Our sinful nature thinks we can either control God or manipulate Him into doing what we want. God does what HE wills. Jonah learned that the hard way and so have I.