We spent the past almost twoish months studying the book of Jonah. As I mentioned previously, Jonah was known as the angry prophet because of his reaction to when God sent him to the Ninevites to call them to repent. Jonah took a ship in the opposite direction from Ninevah to Tarshish. A great storm came, and Jonah was thrown overboard with a whale swallowing him. Spending 3 days in the belly of the whale did not appear to soften Jonah’s heart. Yes, he left the whale and went to Ninevah, but he didn’t give the most eloquent speech. Jonah basically said, “Repent or you get destroyed in 40 days,” so the Ninevites repented and clothed  themselves in sackcloth and sat in ashes. God was pleased and spared the ninevites. As a prophet, you would imagine that Jonah would be pleased, right? Absolutely not. He was so angry because God forgave His enemies. Jonah believed that the ninevites deserved death and destruction. If you think about it, we do the same thing. Our pastor mentioned last night that sometimes we root for people to fail. We place our happiness on whether or not people who make us angry have a good or bad deal. We become indignant when our enemies are blessed and act like Jonah, or we celebrate when they are struggling and think about how much better we are than they are. Either way, we are so fixated on another person that we aren’t fixated on God and what God is doing in our lives because we are watching someone else so closely. What would our life be like if we fixated on God as much as we fixate on others and their lives? What blessings would we see in our lives if we let go of anger, bitterness, pain, and rage and instead chose to forgive? When we were asked if we saw ourselves in Jonah, to be painfully honest, I raised my hand because I’m ashamed to say I have wished evil on my enemies and celebrated their misery. Our pastor pointed out that this is completely opposite of what the gospel calls us to do. When we truly understand the gospel, we realize that people are made by God and loved by Him. What he pointed out is that the only thing we should care about others is if they know Jesus or not. God tends to put people in our lives that we can’t stand, but those are sometimes the same people we are called to pray for. I can’t tell you this is an easy calling. It sometimes pains my existence to pray for those who irk me the most, but obedience is a choice that I have to make.