today i was studying the story of Jonah. it’s crazy how evil the people of Nineveh were. they were a part of the Syrian empire. they were so evil that sometimes when a town heard that they were going to be attacked, they would all commit suicide just to keep from going through what was coming.
they would kill and rape. they would take the husbands as pow’s and skin them alive. then they would bury them in the desert sand up to their necks. THEN, they would pull out their tongues and drive a stake through them so they would go crazy while dying of thirst in the middle of the desert.
it is no wonder that Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. he wanted them to be destroyed! after all, they deserved it right?
Jonah messed up and God forgave him and yet Jonah didn’t feel that Nineveh deserved that same mercy.
Forgiving others can be hard, especially when you feel that they don’t deserve it. Sometimes the reminder of God’s mercy for us and how much we have been forgiven helps us to give grace to the “undeserving”.
