{"id":1549,"date":"2020-09-26T19:01:25","date_gmt":"2020-09-26T23:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/?p=1549"},"modified":"2020-09-26T19:14:29","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T23:14:29","slug":"9-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/?p=1549","title":{"rendered":"9\/20 The 16th Sunday after Pentecost: Happy in Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cAnd should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?\u201d\u00a0 <\/i>Jonah 4.11\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Spit out of the slime of a fish belly after a 3 day stay you would think Jonah might have a new appreciation of God\u2019s mercy towards him.\u00a0 He had ended up belly bound because he turned his back on God \u2013and now Jonah lay gasping for fresh air freed by that eternal mercy after begging God for it and getting it.\u00a0 Not that it made a long-lasting impression on him- he did get up and go tell the great city Nineveh to repent.\u00a0 But as soon as they did Jonah got bent out of shape over it.\u00a0 Evidently Jonah would have preferred to see Nineveh\u2019s destruction \u2013 rather than their conversion and God\u2019s extension of mercy to them.\u00a0\u00a0 Oh it was ok for HIM to cry out to God and be delivered, but not ok for THOSE EVIL NINEVITES.\u00a0 And why had God made him get wrapped up in the whole affair anyway?\u00a0 Jonah just couldn\u2019t let go of it – so he sat down on the hillside hoping to see some wrath, judgement and destruction. But he was disappointed again when his shade bush withered and God gave him another lecture about mercy.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like the laborers who grumbled at the generosity of the landowner in Jesus\u2019 tale of the Kingdom – Jonah just couldn\u2019t bear to see for others what he expected for himself.\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of that feeling in the world today.\u00a0 Not wanting to bear with one another – feeling like some (me\/we) deserve – and some (they\/them) don\u2019t, not wanting to be involved at all.\u00a0 \u00a0God\u2019s kingdom to which we\u2019re all invited will be much different from the fishbelly world we live in today where right hand and left hand work at counter purposes \u2013 if at all.\u00a0 When we accept the invitation, the gift of generous mercy is what we\u2019re offered \u2013 May we let it be what we really want for ourselves and for everybody else.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTrust and obey, for there\u2019s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?\u201d\u00a0 Jonah 4.11\u00a0 Spit out of the slime of a fish belly after a 3 day stay you would … Continue reading 9\/20 The 16th Sunday after Pentecost: Happy in Jesus<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1549"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1553,"href":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions\/1553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/standrewsharlem.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}