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Jonah 3: 1-10
The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:
“Set out for the great city of Nineveh,
and announce to it the message that I will tell you.”
So Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh,
according to the LORD’s bidding.
Now Nineveh was an enormously large city;
it took three days to go through it.
Jonah began his journey through the city,
and had gone but a single day’s walk announcing,
“Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,”
when the people of Nineveh believed God;
they proclaimed a fast
and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh,
he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe,
covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes.
Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh,
by decree of the king and his nobles:
“Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep,
shall taste anything;
they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water.
Man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God;
every man shall turn from his evil way
and from the violence he has in hand.
Who knows, God may relent and forgive, and withhold his blazing wrath,
so that we shall not perish.”
When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way,
he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them;
he did not carry it out.
The Word of the Lord.
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Every morning our alarm clock goes off, I’m sure we’re tempted to hit “snooze.”
Maybe we did this morning.
I did.
In fact, I do most days.
We hit snooze because we’re reluctant to get up; we’d rather stay in our warm and cozy bed than face the day, certainly at 5 am.
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The prophet Jonah felt the same way, only he was hitting the “snooze” button on doing God’s will.
God asked him not once – but twice – to enter the city of Nineveh, encouraging the Ninevites to repent.
But Jonah didn’t want to because the Ninevites were the sworn enemy of Israel. He’d rather watch their city burn to the ground in a fiery blaze than see them repent and be saved.
Ironically enough, because of Jonah’s reluctance to do God’s will, he reveals himself to be no different than his sworn enemies; both sides need to repent and seek God’s forgiveness.
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Are we ever like Jonah? Do we put off doing something that we know is right?
Whether that means picking up the phone; offering or accepting an apology; getting rid of a sinful habit; integrating more time into our day for prayer; going to confession.
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Stop hitting the snooze button.
As Saint Paul reminds us, “The night is over and the day draws near. Let us cast off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.”
Lent is the anointed time to get up and do what is right.
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Image credits: (1) Behind The Madness, WordPress (2) Jewish Learning (3) @Motivating Force