Jonah
Readers who have no difficulty with ‘hearing voices’ will be able to take this ‘call’ literally. Others may prefer to think of it as one of those urges we all get from time to time telling us there is something we must do. But of all calls and urges this must have been one of the most unwanted, if not unbelievable. Nineveh’s reputation didn’t bear thinking about. Jonah’s reaction is vehement. Jonah and those people had nothing in common. Nobody who knew them would touch them with a barge pole. If he told his friends what he was proposing they would question his sanity. Try reason with people like that and you are on a hiding to nothing. Daniel in the lion’s den would be a walk in the park, and if he escaped with his life he would feel scarred and contaminated for ever. Unfortunately the urge wont go away. There is only one thing to do. Pack his bag, get off as far as he can in the opposite direction, and retire.
Two questions here. One, since the call of God (or the urge) rarely comes from nowhere, where does this call come from? Of the reputation of the Ninevites Jonah knew plenty but what did he really know? Were the Ninevites all the same and what could he expect to achieve simply by shouting at them? Had he met any of them face-to-face or had he been listening to the gossip, ‘reading the tabloids’ and buying what everybody wanted to hear without question?
Second, even if everything he heard was true why is he so uptight about it? Could it be something he knows he has to come to terms with and cannot face? Or was ‘Nineveh’ a world which deep down fascinated him and frightened him at the same time? Maybe somewhere he had always wanted to go and been told that he mustn’t. He might even have tried once and had got his fingers burned.
Identify a moment when you had to face a situation not unlike Jonah’s. Think of it as your ‘Nineveh moment’. Work out what you felt and how you handled it. Forget Jonah and make the story your own.