Go to the great city of Nineveh

Posted Nov 22, 08:46

Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me” (Jonah 1:2).

Try to understand Jonah’s problem: He had to go to the enemies of his people. The Assyrians were making forays into northern Israel where Jonah lived. It’s entirely possible that they had attacked his home village of Gath-hepher. Perhaps Assyrians had killed his mother and father. Or maybe he had watched soldiers rape his sisters. If that’s the case, we can certainly understand why Jonah hated this assignment. Being told to go to Nineveh would be like being ordered today to go to Baghdad.

However, Jonah should also have been pleased to learn that the wickedness of Nineveh had come to God’s attention. Jonah believed the Assyrians should be judged for their brutality. Jonah’s solution: Go…and kill them!

But God has a different message. Go…and WIN them.

You have to be divine to make friends with your enemies.

We don’t live in a friendly environment. I certainly don’t in Holland. There is plenty of bad news in the papers each day. There is a lot of anti-Christian sentiment throughout the country. And though I live in a town with many churches, there are also several mosques. On Friday afternoons I often hear the call from the minaret in my office.

When I go shopping at the Saturday market, there are numerous Muslim families in the crowd – you can easily recognize them by the way the men walk and because the women wear headscarves.

What do they think of Christians? Are they being greeted by us with a smile and a hearty “Good morning”?

Recently a Muslim man walked his bicycle past my home. I saw he had a flat tire so I stopped him and asked if I could help. It turned out that he had seven punctures in one of his tires. I invited him in, served him coffee, and fixed his tire.

If we don’t start the process of making friends in a relatively friendly environment, how can we expect to do it in a hostile environment?

source-Secret Believers

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