God is Too Good

For a while now I have been reflecting on God’s goodness. We always hear people say, “God is so good”. But do we really understand how good He is?

        I was reading the story of Jonah the other day, and yes it’s a simple bible story that is always talked about in kid’s church or Sunday school. But we ourselves are sort of like Jonah on an everyday basis. Aren’t we?

The story of Jonah begins with God telling Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and preach against what they are doing.  Jonah decides that is NOT something he wants to do, so he gets on a ship and sails to Tarshish. Shortly after, God sends a huge wind which turns into a violent storm. The sailors knew that Jonah was running from God and finally came to the conclusion that it was because of Jonah that their lives were in danger so they asked Jonah, “what should we do?”. Jonah replied with, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” Regardless of what Jonah said, the sailors tried to row back to land, but nothing was working. So, they pleaded with God that He not take their lives for throwing Jonah in the sea, and they threw him into the sea. The sea quickly became calm and instead of Jonah drowning, God PROVIDED a great fish to swallow Jonah. While Jonah was inside of the great fish, he prayed to God crying out to him. Jonah 2: 7 “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.” After the third day, Jonah gets spit back out by the fish, and God speaks to him AGAIN about going to Nineveh. Jonah immediately obeys this time and his purpose is fulfilled. There is more to the story, but I would like to reflect on this portion of it for now.

        We, just like Jonah are given instruction from God. Just like Jonah, sometimes we think, “you know what God, I appreciate what you said, but I’m going to try it MY way.” Then we stumble upon a storm in our life because we thought our way was better and then, we cry out to God to help us out! If God were a regular person and had no grace or compassion on us, He would ignore us and leave us in the rubble we got ourselves into. But no….He doesn’t. He gives us a second chance and rescues us. He allows a big fish to come in and swallow us up so that we can be placed back on track. I often think to myself, we are so UNWORTHY, we are so undeserving. But despite all of our faults (because we all have many) He swoops in to save the day. And when He does that, He doesn’t just say, “Well since you didn’t listen the first time, you only get half of what I promised.” No, He gives it to us in FULL. He really amazes me. I constantly sit in my quiet time trying so hard to comprehend why God is so good and loving to us.

I guess some things are not for us to comprehend, but one thing I do comprehend is to give praise and gratitude to whom it belongs. Let’s not take advantage of how good our God really is. God is too good.