For God So Loved

How is that we are living lives so full of the grace of God and yet, we seem to be missing so much of that grace? So much, in fact, that we become jealous and bitter when He pours out His grace on someone else? 

Simple. 

We think we deserve it. 

Jonah didn't recognize God's grace in his life because he was God's prophet. He was one chosen by God. He was a faithful man, probably considered himself righteous, knew that he had a special calling on his life, and was used to being the one that other folks came to with their God questions because they knew he was the prophet. 

This may have been part of the reason that he didn't want to go to Nineveh. Remember - his objection to going to Nineveh was that the people were going to listen to him, hear the word of God, turn their hearts around, and repent. He was afraid the authority of his voice would be enough to turn them and then, God wouldn't punish the wicked the way that Jonah wanted Him to. 

He wasn't like Moses, claiming that he was unqualified for the job. He wasn't like David, accepting his smallness and staying out with the sheep while God was looking for a prophet. There wasn't anything that suggests to us that Jonah didn't think he was up to the task. 

So it's not that big of a leap to think that Jonah the prophet was full of more than just God's spirit. 

He was also full of himself. 

Maybe. I mean, it's not something we're told about him, but it's something that's not hard to fathom if we look at his life and his examples and his words. And being full of himself doesn't necessarily mean that he's puffed up or arrogant about it; it just means that he has a full sense of who he is and feels God's bigness in him while he's doing his thing. 

So it makes perfect sense to Jonah that God would rescue him again and again and again. It doesn't seem like grace; it seems like the obvious thing that has to happen. God certainly isn't going to let His prophet succumb to trouble in the world. It's one of the perks of being Jonah. 

In the same way, we can become pretty full of ourselves.

We pray, read the Bible, go to church, tithe, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick. We wear the necklace and sport the bumper sticker and preach the Gospel. So the things that happen to us that make our lives a little better or a little easier are expected. Of course God loves us like He does. Why wouldn't He? We're fantastic. 

Then we look around and see Him loving other folks in these really dramatic, wild, and world-changing ways, and we get a little jealous. We get a little green. We can't stomach it. It doesn't make any sense to us.

Because we've lost the sense of just how much grace our own lives have required...by believing that we deserved it. And if we deserved it, then it wasn't grace. And if it wasn't grace, then it looks like God is loving other persons a lot more than He's loving us. 

How dare He. 

That's why we have to keep looking back at our own stories and seeing the patterns of grace and recognizing them for what they are. Which requires recognizing us for what we are. Which is...sinners. Saved by grace. Not because we deserved it. 

May we be amazed by it.