This has been perhaps my least joyful Eastertide since I started keeping the practice of 50 Days of Joy … so far. I’m not fretting—just tending to the longing for an unforced and unhurried joy. A string of minor colds through most of April hasn’t helped.

Still, there have been pockets of joy.

One I keep returning to: hosting our Ascend gap-year students for dinner. I made my chili. Midway through the meal, Julia looked up and said, “Alastair has been perfecting this recipe since we got married. Eighteen years!” Then it dawned on her, “… the whole time you’ve been alive.”

Yes, I have spent the lifespan of Generation Alpha working on this chili.

I haven’t written much this season. But what I do offer, I offer boldly: this recipe. Make it for people you love. People you’re just getting to know. It’s worth your time. And joy will be nearby. I can almost guarantee it.

Let me know how it goes.

For almost a decade, I’ve celebrated Eastertide by tracking daily joys—small and remarkable—and writing brief reflections on them, which I share on Instagram with a photo. This year, I’m compiling my reflections into a single post. These are fragments. Brief daily notes, not a polished essay. I’ve resisted the urge to smooth them into something tidier than they were.

Christ is Risen

We celebrated Easter Sunday in Nanaimo. Despite a fairly annoying head cold, we corralled the family into the car and made the drive up island. Clear skies. Quiet roads. Trees set against the ocean. Creation hushed and still, yet praising.

Our church is working toward launching a campus in Nanaimo. Last summer, Luke and Helena moved there with their family to begin this good work. They hosted a pop-up Easter service—wonderful by every measure—and being part of their milestone brought back memories of our own church-planting adventure.

Luke and Helena said our presence made them feel grounded. It’s a gift that Julia and I can have that effect within our Coastline family. A sign of rootedness. Like we’re budding up out of the soil.

Being sick tempered my joy. But it kept me attuned to the need for resurrection. A small gift I suppose. I didn’t feel joy during the day. But I was not oblivious to joy either.

Monday | Day 2

I spent the morning in Psalm 46, which has been speaking into the political theology books I’ve been reading lately. Be still and know that I am God. In context, this isn’t merely a contemplative invitation. It’s a declaration that Christ is King. The only One who will make wars cease. In a world of political turmoil and unrest, we wait. It takes active patience. It takes a hope that doesn’t retreat into passivity. But sitting in the stillness of that ache—for God to do what only God can do—there was a rumour of joy in the waiting.

The rest of my day was more earthy: digging holes in the backyard for our pavers. Dirt on my hands. Mud from the hose. A better path. Joy in the basics. Sometimes that’s enough.

Tuesday | Day 3

Delmar mentioned that, in the church calendar, this is “the octave of Easter.” I remarked that seemed strange—it’s only the third day. He reminded me that the entire first week of Easter bears that name. Some comedic joy took root.

As Eastertide begins, I find myself more attuned to my longing for joy than to joy itself. Though now I’m curious whether joy progresses like an octave. What does each note sound like? I’m not disheartened—but so far, the first week has held more dissonance than resonance with the season. Joy in a diminished chord? Accompanied by joyful anticipation that these notes will ascend into harmony.

Wednesday | Day 4

Numb. The left side of my jaw and tongue. Totally, utterly numb. Blergh. I loathe it. I often opt to have work done without freezing. But this time I accepted the advice against it. Two fillings repaired. The experts said the numbness would wear off in three to four hours. It took six and a half. That’s how it goes.

One could say I’m an expert on joy, all things considered. But still amateurish. Read my dissertation. Read my book. Cultivate joy. It’ll likely take longer than the estimate I give you. And sometimes not. That’s how it goes.

Numbness drifting away seems an apt metaphor for this octave week of joy. I haven’t felt the strong grip of joy yet. I’m being a bit more relentless in what I claim as joy this year. I’ve felt its many positive accompaniments: happiness, nostalgia, contentment, peace. But full-blown joy? Not quite.

I’ve been thinking about The Sound of Music. When my dad is contented, he unconsciously hums The Lonely Goatherd. It’s very endearing. It got me thinking about the children being taught the scales in Do Re Mi—set against a bleak historical backdrop of the Nazi invasion. An apt metaphor for learning the scales of joy. Learn them with war in the background. “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts,” as Wendell Berry puts it. Who knows? By the time we reach that second octave, we may be in harmony. Or flat. Or sharp. Nevertheless: sing. Sing anyway.

We can call this fourth day of Easter Fa. With enough time, numbness fades. You can count on it.

Thursday | Day 5

Still sick. The day had much good in it. But felt like a fight against mind and body—pulling myself along.

I appreciated time in the Word, reflecting on ransom and justification. I appreciated turning onto Foul Bay and seeing the mountains. I appreciated the sun on my walk to the bank at lunch. I appreciated my colleagues and students — and eating alone in the break room. I appreciated the freedom to call it a day, come home, and take a short nap. I appreciated time with my family.

Perhaps appreciation is the note for today. The So in the scale. A needle pulling thread toward joy.

Friday | Day 6

Mental fog. Still getting over this cold. Walking the dog with Julia, on the loop back home, we found a Rubber Plant left at the side of the road for the taking. So we took it. A joyful discovery! I awkwardly carried it home while Baxter trotted alongside.

Once home, Julia potted it—only to discover the plant has bugs. We basically took on the responsibility of disposing of someone else’s trash. There’s a deep sense of the comedic in it. One man’s trash is another’s treasure, except when it’s actually just trash. A wink of joy, even if not explicit. How can one not delight in the comedic?

In the evening, I hosted Jesus Supper Club and gave our Table Conversation cards a shot. Prompts that move from small talk to going deep. “When’s the last time you felt fear about something?” I shared something vulnerable to take the pressure off. Then nobody shared. At least not initially. Plates were cleared. Jokes were made. Dessert was offered. Until I named the fact that everyone was afraid of the question. More laughter. Eventually, people shared. It was honest. It was good.

La: a note to follow So. The comedic follows appreciation. We do live in a divine comedy, after all. Perhaps we’re afraid to see it.

Saturday | Day 7

The tried and true staples of Ecclesiastes joy. “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.” A quiet, burning joy —embers flickering—as I spent time with Ansley and Maggie doing the things they love: pancakes and French toast, a walk around Thetis Lake, swimming at Commonwealth, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a trip to Michaels, playing games, snuggling as we fell asleep. The joy of the blessed ordinary.

Ti: a drink with jam and bread. If you can delight in it, take joy in it. Note: it is a gift from God (Eccles 5:19).

The Octave | Day 8

The octave reached. But where is the joy? Perhaps I put too much pressure on myself — discrediting small joys, or refusing to name them as such this year. I have waited instead for joy’s surprise. And I’m still waiting.

The morning began with Psalm 51 and Romans 7. The notes of the octave ascended to “the joy of salvation” — or rather, to the longing for it. The plea for it. It seems appropriate. The ordinary joys, as good as they are (and rightly placed on the scale where they’re due), rise toward the joy of salvation. Not the joy of the Spirit, but the joy of saving grace. I’m left with the prayer that never loses its weight for Eastertide joy: restore to me the joy of my salvation. I never tire of praying it.

Coda

The thread, as best I can trace it, runs through the body: a cold that wouldn’t quit, a jaw gone numb, dirt on my hands, daughters asleep beside me. Joy, when it flickered, was earthy and accidental: a buggy rubber plant, a table afraid of a question, embers rather than flame.

I came into this octave expecting joy’s surprise and instead was reacquainted with its longing. Yet — as I apparently needed reminding — that’s the nature of joy: we feel its longing more than its arrival. I did write a book about this. Perhaps that’s the comedic thread beneath it all. I’d rather long for joy than quench the desire. Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti — and the scale resolves not into arrival, but into the ask:

Restore to me the joy of my salvation.

The octave was always going to end there.

We are people of resurrection.

May we never forget: this is not a tame worldview. It defies what we might consider to be “normal.” Because in God’s economy dead stuff comes back to life. After three days in the tomb: Jesus took a breath, then another, and forevermore. Christ is risen! Hallelujah! Death was tidily defeated—which is why Jesus neatly folded his burial linens. Then the mischievous laugh of Easter was unleashed forever. We are not living in a tragedy but a comedy: the good news of great joy.

The Season of Eastertide

The church calendar trains us to celebrate the resurrection from Easter Sunday through Pentecost. The emotional heartbeat and language of this season is joy—death-defying joy. Over the past eight years, I have issued a challenge to myself. I try to embrace Easter as a full season. I fan into flame my longing for the bright and radiant joy of Easter Sunday to spill over and colour each moment and day of the season. No matter what I’m going through, even in difficult times, I commit to pray for joy to sneak up on me, to surprise me, to unveil the goodness and beauty of life, to even sit shiva with me.

In the Upper Room, on the evening before his crucifixion, Jesus had much to say to his disciples about resurrection joy. For example:

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.

I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.

Passages: John 15.11, 16.20-22, 16.24, 17.13

Did you know we live as people with the promise of complete joy?

This is a joy that no one can take away.

It’s a promise almost too good to be true. Because the promise isn’t that our own joy will grow and grow and grow. Rather, our joy will be completed by Christ’s very own joy dwelling in us.

Stop and think about that.

The joy in him — in us.

This is why this joy is akin to the joy a mother feels with her newborn. All the internal movements of joy now root, suckle and rest upon her skin.

So it is with our joy.

Joy always comes to us like a gift—a longing that births life. When we feel joy, we want the emotion to last, to stay, to linger a little while longer. Because joy infuses our world with truth, meaning, and beauty. This is why C.S. Lewis says that joy comes with a “pang.” It connects us to an ache, a sense of incompleteness. The reason for this is because our own joy nudges us toward our complete joy in Christ. When these joys intermingle, like holding hands, we start to taste the completeness of joy.

This is not to say that the only joy that matters is the spiritual joy of Jesus. Instead I’m saying something far better: when we are in Christ, his joy illuminates and amplifies all of our joys. Every little and big joy can be received as a gift of grace, an invitation into the fullness of life, an onramp into thanksgiving, an opportunity to rejoice in the God who is joy.

An Invitation into 50 Days of Joy

The resurrection gives us a joy that no one can take away. While true, I know firsthand that it’s easy to fall back into the throes of disenchantment: despair and cynicism easily take ahold of my heart and I find myself adrift in a seas of joylessness. Do you know this tension? We can fall back to the default of living as if dead stuff stays dead.

This is why the season of Eastertide invites us to intentionally cultivate our lives for joy. We are people on the brink of wearing crowns of everlasting joy. No one can take this promise or the surety of this future from us.

Since 2018, I’ve challenged myself to celebrate 50 Days of Joy. Basically, it’s a habit of reflection. Each day, I ask God to surprise me with joy. At some point in the day, I look backward. I scour the minutes and hours for moments of goodness and beauty. Sometimes it takes no time at all: I know exactly what moment gave me joy. Other times, it takes a bit of effort. Then, I write a short reflection with a photo. I share most of them publicly on Instagram with the hashtag #50daysofjoy.

Here’s an example:

When it comes to having children, someone once said, “You’ll have less fun but more joy.” I’m not sure I agree with the former but I wholeheartedly agree with the latter—being a father has amplified my joy. Indeed, it is among my greatest joys.

My eldest fractured her wrist yesterday. And today, we figured that out. Oops. It’s a relatively minor fracture (compared to her broken arm five years ago). She’s casted up and ready to go. I can’t say it was fun to be in the Emergency Room for hours on end. But there was nowhere else I’d rather be than by her side … even though she was mostly engrossed in a movie or book.

On my run this afternoon (my ankles are getting stronger, Thanks be to God), I came across an intriguing bench. A rather idyllic path leads to it. The plaque reads: “A place to rest, reflect, and remember in loving memory of our grandmother, mother, sister, and daughter.” But when you sit on the bench, the view is rather, well, uninspired. A beautiful lake resides just around the bend, but this bench is positioned to look at … bushes.

But should you sit, rest, and reflect: you will see more than bushes. You will see the beauty of the ordinary. The unremarkable transfigured into glory. I won’t pretend to be able to name all the species of plants and trees. As I stood there, no longer perplexed by the position of the bench, I was enamoured by the gift it offers: the beautiful ordinary.

Back to being a father: most days are ordinary. And if I’m careless, they can even feel unremarkable—a compilation of repetitions. But then moments poke holes in the veneer of banality, like hospital waiting rooms for relatively minor injuries. You look at life with a renewed thankfulness and your heart becomes a little more sensitive too. When I sit, rest, and reflect I find that joy often abides somewhere between thankfulness and a sensitive heart.

Would it have been more fun to play hooky from school and go on a walk in the woods with my daughter rather than wait, and wait, and wait among the injured and sick? Of course. Nevertheless, joy sat quietly with us as we waited.

The joy of fatherhood, and, the joy of Karen Delsey’s bench.

Since I’ve repeated the challenge many times now, I’ve discovered that Howard Thurman knew exactly what he was talking about when he wrote, “Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy.” Sometimes I am present to joy apprehending my heart. Sometimes I miss out on the joy that was already present in my day. But through intentional reflection, gratitude, and giving thanks, guess what?

Joy rises like the dawn.

Because our gratitude builds an onramp to joy as we give thanks to God.

In the season of Eastertide, I refuse to make a distinction between “earthly” and “heavenly” joys or “natural” and “spiritual” joys. Instead, I embrace that the Spirit speaks in the emotion of joy and that every joy is a gift from God that can draw us ever closer to his joyful heart. Because God is joyful.

In the Upper Room, Jesus tells us that through prayer, we tap into his complete joy. He even prays for us to know the full measure of his joy. So, what if we open ourselves up to this possibility? The sure possibility that if Jesus asks for something he receives it, and if he makes a promise, he keeps it—because he said he would rise from the dead and he did. Hallelujah!

Friends, I invite you to join me in this Eastertide practice.

The equation is basically this:

• Pray for joy

• Look for joy

• Share your joy

Years past, I aim to share a reflection on social media each day. Inevitably I miss a few. It doesn’t need to be a daily practice. Perhaps you share a reflection a couple times a week or once a week. Maybe you share it around the dinner table. However you do it, the reason that I share my little moments of joy is because joy is contagious—and a little bit of joy goes a long way.

Since I’m taking a break from most social media platforms at the moment, I plan to keep daily reflections and share them in a weekly article that tries to find a thread that holds them together.

If you choose to accept this invitation, would you let me know? Make a comment or shoot me a note. I’d love to pray for you throughout this season.

May we know the fullness of complete joy.

Given we are entering a season of joy, if you’d like to read a book about joy, I can’t resist encouraging you to read Longing for Joy: An Invitation into the Goodness and Beauty of Life.

Three times.

Three times Jesus told his closest disciples that he must suffer and be crucified and on the third day rise. Three times they didn’t understand what he meant.

Then it started to happen. And they still didn’t understand.

Jesus was misunderstood throughout his ministry. But on Good Friday, the misunderstanding reaches its depths. The path to Golgotha, the place of the Skull, was paved by it. The cross was surrounded by it.

And yet.

Before the darkness fell. Before the veil tore. Before he breathed his last. Jesus was fixed to a beam with iron nails. Lungs fighting against the weight of his own body just to form words.

And the first words he speaks from the cross? Looking out over the rulers, the soldiers, the criminals, the crowd, those who loved him standing at a distance — Jesus prays:

Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.

Of course the cross is misunderstood.

This isn’t where you expect to encounter God. It’s a Roman execution. It’s the curse of Deuteronomy made visible. It’s the end of every hope they brought to Jerusalem that week.

And yet.

Fixed to a beam. Lungs failing. Jesus prays. For every person there. For every person yet to draw near.

And we can misunderstand this prayer just as completely as everyone else misunderstood the cross.

One by one, look at who is here.

The Rulers

“He saved others; let him save himself — if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” (Luke 23:35)

The rulers didn’t think they were rejecting God. That’s what makes this so uncomfortable. They thought they were defending God. Their categories were airtight. Their convictions were sincere. Deuteronomy confirmed it. A man dying on a Roman cross was under the curse of God.

The cross wasn’t ambiguous to them. It was verdict. And yet they sound more like Satan in the wilderness temptation: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here… he will save you.”

Sincere, theologically serious, God-defending people — people who looked, in many ways, like us — completely misunderstood what God was doing. Not because they stopped believing. But because of their beliefs.

The prophet Isaiah had already seen this moment. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5)

They say: if you’re the Messiah, save yourself. But they have it exactly backwards. Because he is the Messiah, he stays. He doesn’t save himself because he is saving us. And Jesus says:

Father, forgive them.

Prayed over the men who were sneering up at him. They misunderstood. He forgave them anyway.

The Soldiers

“The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ There was a written notice above him, which read: This is the King of the Jews.” (Luke 23:36–38)

The soldiers understood power. Kings conquer. Kings command. Kings do not die on crosses. And if they do, their kingdom dies with them. They joined the voice of the rulers, taunting Jesus to save himself.

The sign placed above Jesus was the punchline of a joke Pilate was telling at the Jews’ expense. They nailed it up in mockery. They didn’t know they were posting a coronation announcement.

The soldiers were simply following orders, echoing the voices around them. But as they mocked, they misunderstood that the power of this King saves not through force, but through weakness.

And the King says:

Father, forgive them.

Prayed over soldiers who were laughing. They misunderstood. He forgave them anyway.

The First Criminal

“One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’” (Luke 23:39)

He is in agony. Beside him is someone who has claimed divine authority. Use it. Get us down. He triples down on the taunts of the rulers and soldiers.

Salvation, to him, means rescue from this situation.

We know this too. We come to God in real pain and what we want is to get down from whatever cross we’re on. Fix the marriage. Halt the diagnosis. Stop the freefall. And when rescue doesn’t come in the form we demanded, we land on his conclusion:

Either God cannot. God will not. Or God is not.

But when we focus only on the circumstances we want God to rescue us from, we miss how he is actually rescuing us in the midst of them. Even so, Jesus says:

Father, forgive them.

The prayer had already been prayed over him. He didn’t understand. He was forgiven anyway.

The Crowd

“When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away.”(Luke 23:48)

The mockery ceases. After Jesus dies, people genuinely grieve. The weight of what they witnessed registered somewhere too deep for words. For many, it was the death of their dreams and hope for a better future.

They went home. Certain the story was over.

If the story ends with crucifixion, all we are left with is grief. All we can do is beat our chests.

But the mourning is not the end of the story. The crowd couldn’t see this yet. And Jesus’ prayer lingers over them:

Father, forgive them.

Prayed over people walking away in the wrong direction. They misunderstood. He forgave them anyway.

The Second Criminal

“The other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’” (Luke 23:40–42)

A dying man turning toward a dying king with the smallest possible reaching.

Remember me.

That’s all.

It sounds like David in Psalm 25:7: Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good.

And what does Jesus say?

Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Today. Luke uses that word like a flare — every time it appears, something irreversible is arriving. Today a Saviour is born. Today this Scripture is fulfilled. Today salvation has come to this house.

And now to a man with nothing but his death sentence:

Today.

Not eventually. Not once the accounting is complete. In paradise — the Greek word for Eden. The garden. The place where God walked with his people and nothing stood between them.

He asked for a future kingdom. Jesus gives him the present tense. He asked for eventually. Jesus says today.

His “remember me” didn’t purchase the paradise. It received it.

Just a turning. Toward the one who had already prayed Father, forgive them — and letting that prayer be for him. Forgiven, yes. Now, reconciled.

The Centurion

“When the centurion saw what had happened, he praised God and said, ‘Surely this was a righteous man.’” (Luke 23:47)

Notice who this is.

A Roman soldier. The same uniform as the men who mocked him. The same army that nailed him there. He has been standing at the foot of this cross doing his job — overseeing an execution. And something has broken through.

In Luke’s gospel, he doesn’t declare Jesus Lord or Messiah. He says righteous man — which is both less than the whole truth and more than anyone else in authority has managed all day.

Something cracked open in him that afternoon that he didn’t arrive with.

He speaks without mockery. Without demands. Without grief that goes home.

He doesn’t yet have words for what he knows. But he knows.

Father, forgive them.

Prayed over a soldier standing at the foot of the cross he helped build. He didn’t fully understand. But something in him was opening.

The Women

“All those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.” (Luke 23:49)

They didn’t leave.

That matters more than it might appear.

The disciples had fled. The crowd had gone home. But these women, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, who had watched him teach and heal and move toward the forgotten — they stayed.

At a distance. But present.

There is a kind of faith that looks like this. Not able to explain what they believe or why they remain. Just — unwilling to leave. Something holding them there at the edge of the unbearable.

That’s not nothing. It’s a beginning.

On Good Friday

Some sneered. Some mocked. Some demanded rescue. Some grieved and went home too soon. One said remember me. One watched until something in him cracked open. And some simply refused to leave.

From a cross, Jesus prayed over each and every one of them.

He offers forgiveness for the sins of the world — born in his body on that crooked, blood-stained cross.

That is the glory of this day.

The love that saved us instead of himself. The forgiveness offered before it was sought. The garden opened from the worst place in the world.

This is what the cross is.

An invitation back into the presence of God. Reconciliation from our estrangement. The obliteration of the debt of sin.

So wherever you are today —

The cross already accomplished everything before you understand it.

Forgiveness is offered before you ask. But what makes it yours — what moves you from forgiven to reconciled — is faith. A turning. Even the smallest one.

Remember me.

That’s enough. It has always been.

Jesus is not a king who waits to be impressed. He is not a God who forgives reluctantly. He is the one who — from a cross, in agony, before anyone understood what was happening — prayed:

Father, forgive them.

He does remember us. He will remember us. He already has. He always will.

The rulers were there. The soldiers were there. The criminals were there. The crowd was there. The centurion was there. The women were there.

And somehow, across two thousand years, so are we.

The question is whether we will move closer to the cross — carrying all our misunderstandings and laying them down at his feet in exchange for his prayer:

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

I want to confess something. I don’t like Lent that much.

It’s too long. And honestly, I didn’t even practice it this year. I like the idea of Lent more than the living of it. The concept is beautiful. Forty days of intentional stripping away, of making room, of honest reckoning with what we cling to. But somewhere around day four, I tend to reach for chocolate and wonder what I was thinking.

What I do love, without reservation, is Holy Week. Particularly Maundy Thursday. It is one of my favourite services of the entire year.

Something happens on Maundy Thursday. We slow down. We dwell in one of the most intimate scenes in all of the Gospels. John 13 captures the tenor of the whole evening. A farewell conversation between Jesus and his closest friends, his death looming on the horizon, confusion thick in the air. The disciples keep missing the weight of the moment. But then, how could they fully know? Even when Jesus had told them plainly, they somehow couldn’t hear it. We’re a bit like that too, sometimes.

Then John writes those four words: and it was night. The sun didn’t simply set. Something darker than evening was descending. Things were shifting. The very reason Jesus came at all was now close. Death was in the room.

This is the scene. The meal is underway. Judas has already been quietly prompted by darkness. The plot is already in motion. And then Jesus, knowing all of this, knowing everything that this night and the next day will produce, gets up from the table.

He takes off his outer robe.
Ties a towel around his waist.
Pours water into a basin.
And kneels.

He begins to wash his disciples’ feet. One by one. This was the task of the lowest servant in the household. Not even a Jewish servant would be required to do this. It was beneath nearly everyone in the room. The disciples felt it instinctively. This isn’t right. The order of things is being violated.

When Jesus comes to Simon Peter, Peter can’t take it. “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” The question barely contains the outrage. A moment later he sharpens it: “No. You shall never wash my feet.”

I love this moment. I love Peter’s bluntness. I love the sheer human resistance of it. Because it is exactly how we feel too, even if we’ve learned to dress it up more politely.

And what drives Jesus to this moment? John tells us in the very first verse of the chapter: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

That is the engine. Love is why Jesus wraps a towel around his waist like a servant. Love is why God incarnate—the one through whom all things were made—gets down on hand and knee before dirty human feet.

Not to do our bidding. Not to run our errands. But to serve us as our humble Saviour. And this, John wants us to understand, is not a detour from the cross. It is part of the same journey. The basin and the towel and the crucifixion are the same love wearing different clothes. Jesus said it himself in another place: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Maundy Thursday reminds us: Salvation is not only the forgiveness of sins. It is the restoration of dignity. Jesus kneels before your dirty feet to tell you: you are worth this.

I have washed feet on Maundy Thursday.

A feeble, fumbling imitation of Jesus. I have knelt before crooked toes, neatly polished nails, questionable hygiene, and feet belonging to people who’ve sent me rather pointed emails.

From that peculiar vantage point—looking up—I almost always recognize something in people’s eyes. A hesitation. An instinct to pull back.

It looks like the face of Peter.
Sometimes it looks like my own face.

Shortly after my wife Julia and I were engaged, I found myself enveloped in a cloud of shame. As I contemplated the commitment we were about to make, I kept being haunted by my past. Things I’d done, patterns I wasn’t proud of. My shame had a simple, insistent suggestion: hide. Lock it away. Pretend it isn’t there.

But my conscience wasn’t at ease.

So I told Julia what I was carrying. We decided I would share it all. I knew it might be hard for her to absorb. When I finished, I felt stripped bare. Vulnerable and exposed in the worst possible way.

Julia was silent. Then she got up and left the room. The short time she was gone felt like a very long time.

Then she came back.
Carrying a basin of water.
She removed my socks.
And washed my feet.

I wanted to stop her. It felt beneath her. Undeserved. But something in me, I believe it was the Spirit, whispered: Stay. Let her get close enough to your mess to love you through it.

This is the gift Jesus is offering Peter.
And Peter almost refuses it.
“No. You shall never wash my feet.”

Until Jesus says: “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

And Peter, bless him, immediately overcorrects: “Then not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

That’s usually how it goes with Jesus. When you actually see how much he loves you, it doesn’t take much convincing to do what he asks. He isn’t in the business of bending your will when he can restore your heart instead.

… Then there was Judas

But we can’t leave Judas out of this. John doesn’t let us.

Right there at the beginning of the chapter, Judas is already collaborating with darkness. The plot is already moving. His feet are already pointed toward the door.

And yet, Jesus washed his feet too.
Scrubbing away the dirt.
Not the darkness.

Why didn’t Jesus wait until Judas had left? Why did he have to include him? Why wash the feet of someone whose heart is already closed, who will not be softened, who will walk out of that room and sell him for thirty pieces of silver?

We might draw a line. Judas is too far. Jesus has gone too far here. But then we have to reckon with Peter. Who, not long after swearing he would die for Jesus, will deny even knowing him three times before sunrise. If Judas is too far, what about Peter?

And if Peter, then, what about us?

Why does Jesus wash feet?

Paul writes in Romans 5: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”And then, even further: “While we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.”

This is not a God who had to be persuaded to love us. This is not a God who loves us once we’ve cleaned ourselves up. This is a God whose love descends into the dirt, to the feet of enemies and sinners alike—which is to say, to our feet.

Here is something I heard many times that I haven’t been able to shake:

You’ve never locked eyes with someone God does not love.

Even your enemies. Even the ones who’ve caused real harm. Even the ones who don’t deserve it. Even Judas.

The Inconvenient Part

Here is where it gets uncomfortable. Because John 13 is not simply a story about Jesus washing feet. Jesus is rarely that tidy.

When he finishes and puts his robe back on, he asks them: “Do you understand what I have done for you?” And then, without waiting long: “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Basically: “Copy me.”

And then, just to drive it home, a few verses later: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

As I have loved you. That is the bar. Not as you feel. Not when it’s convenient. Not toward people who deserve it. As I have loved you — which means: sacrificially, understandingly, and forgivingly.

Understandingly is the one that stops me. Jesus loves without illusion. He knows exactly what Judas will do. He knows exactly how Peter will fail. He kneels anyway. This is wide-eyed, fully-knowing, nothing-hidden love. That is a far harder thing than loving someone you’ve simply misjudged, or loving in the reasonable hope of a good outcome.

And forgivingly. Jesus is willing to forgive the very worst.
Not just the amateur-hour sins.

But we need to be honest about what forgiveness actually is, because we get it wrong in ways that harm us.

Forgiveness is not a feeling. To forgive is not to forget. To forgive is not to be freed from having to forgive it all over again when the wound surfaces again.

Forgiveness is this: to accept the cost, absorb the cost, and release the person from the impossibility of paying it back.

• Accept: it cannot unhappen.

• Absorb: it’s not fair, but it’s yours to carry.

• Release: the debt cannot be repaid, and you let it go.

Critically: forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. Reconciliation requires the other person — it requires them to own the harm, to come with genuine openness, to show something of repentance. Forgiveness is always possible. Reconciliation is not always possible, and it is not always yours alone to offer.

Don’t confuse the two. Jesus calls us to forgive. He does not call us to pretend.

And yet. How? How do we actually forgive the inexcusable?

C.S. Lewis wrote:

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

I hate this quote.

It’s beautiful in theory.
Brutally hard in practice.

Corrie Ten Boom survived the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbrück.

Her father and sister did not.

After the war, she travelled Europe speaking about forgiveness and the grace of God. One evening in Germany, after she had spoken, a man approached her with his hand extended. She recognized him immediately. He had been one of the cruelest guards at Ravensbrück. She remembered, with horrible vividness, the humiliations of that place. And now here he was — telling her he had become a Christian, that he had received God’s forgiveness, and that he was asking to hear it from one of his victims.

“Corrie Ten Boom, will you forgive me?”

Her blood ran cold. She could only hate him.

So she prayed the only prayer she had: “Thank you, Jesus, that you have brought into my heart God’s love through the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Father, that your love is stronger than my hatred and unforgiveness.”

And in that moment, she was free.

She took his hand. And she later said: “It was as if I felt God’s love stream through my arms. You’ve never touched the ocean of God’s love as when you forgive your enemies.”

Corrie Ten Boom could not forgive.

But God.

This is the only honest answer to Lewis. Can we actually forgive the inexcusable? Not on our own. But God. God’s love is stronger than our hatred. Stronger than our unforgiveness. Strong enough to move through a cold and trembling hand.

The Spirit will help.

Maundy Thursday reminds us that our ability to forgive doesn’t always start with forgiveness.

Maybe it starts with something smaller. A conversation you’ve been putting off. A kindness you’ve been withholding. A grudge you’ve quietly been feeding.

Maybe it starts with picking up the towel.
Washing some feet.
Seeing what happens next.

The presence of feet that will betray and feet that will disown on Maundy Thursday also ask us: Who is your enemy?

It can be as ordinary as someone with whom you deeply disagree. A family member. A friend who betrayed your confidence. A colleague. An ex. Someone at church. A politician who makes your blood boil. Anybody.

Some of us have been betrayed. Some have been abandoned or abused. Some have been lied to, humiliated, or discarded by someone who should have known better. Some of us have been carrying that for years.

I know some of that weight myself.

For some of us, the work of forgiveness is something we need to do not alone, but with a pastor, a therapist, a trusted friend. The wound is real, and forgiveness of real wounds deserves real support.

But eventually, we have to reckon with this: Jesus washed the feet that would hurt him. And Jesus washed the ugly feet that have hurt us too.

This is how the light gets in

Jesus said it plainly: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

The watching world does not read our theology. They don’t track our church attendance. They watch whether we actually kneel before people who don’t seem to deserve it. Whether we absorb the cost. Whether we serve and forgive in the dark.

John has already told us it was night when Judas walked out. And on that night, in the darkness, Jesus still knelt. Still served. Still loved—even his enemies.

When the night lingers in our homes, our friendships, our city, our world—Jesus says: this is how the light gets in. Not through our platforms or our programmes. Through how we love. That is how the world will know. That is how we shine in the dark.

We cannot do this on our own. Corrie Ten Boom couldn’t. Peter couldn’t. Neither can we.

But God.

So we begin where we must always begin: in awe of the Lord who washes our feet. Cleansed by a love strong enough to forgive the inexcusable. Struggling, imperfectly, to forgive as we have been forgiven.

But God.

When I was nineteen, I loved to go ghost-hunting.

Most nights, I worked at the pizza shop, then went ghost-hunting with friends. Two or three nights a week, I had rehearsals with my band, then we’d pile into a car and go ghost-hunting. Bastion Square. Ross Bay Cemetery. And most of all, the Uplands Golf Course—one of the most famous ghost sighting places in North America. The story was that a woman was murdered on her wedding day and you could see her standing in her dress crying.

For about four years, I went at least once a week.

We never saw anything.

Admitting you used to hunt for ghosts can take people by surprise. I can see them trying to figure out if I’m joking.

But strip away the ghost-hunting and what you’re left with is this: I was searching for transcendence. I wanted evidence that the material world wasn’t all there is.

During that time, I read everything I could find on the New Age shelf. Hinduism, Buddhism, everything in-between. The Celestine Prophecy told me every event has significance, contains a message. This resonated. I had questions: Who am I? Do I matter? Is there something to this life?

I remember sitting cross-legged in a yoga studio, crystals arranged like some spiritual Stonehenge. I sat there for an hour, then two, even three, waiting to feel something. Anything.

Nothing.

I opened my eyes to the same blue yoga mat, the same restless questions. The crystals looked like overpriced rocks.

Just another kind of ghost hunting.

One time, I was ghost-hunting with a friend who was in a Christian hardcore band. Yes, those exist. We were at Uplands, waiting in the cold for a dead bride who never showed.

He kept asking me what I thought life was all about.

I gave him my usual answers: “Being a good person. Caring for others. Doing meaningful work.”

“And how’s that going for you?”

It bothered me.

So I started telling him about my beliefs—the stuff I’d been reading, my theories about the universe and consciousness. The significance of events. The synchronicity of 11:11. The inner true self.

“And how’s that going for you?”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t going well.

I went silent.

Finally he said, “Alastair, if Jesus is really who he said he is, isn’t that worth finding out?”

Chris wasn’t pushy. He was thoughtful. Yet challenging.

I remember thinking, “I wouldn’t mind being more like this person.”

That was new. Christians, in my limited experience, were people to avoid—mostly boring with rules I had no interest in following.

But this person was different.

I kept playing shows. Kept searching. And Christians kept appearing in the strangest places.

I was at a party one night, sitting on a purple couch. A friend I’ll call Greg sat down next to me. He was in another band. He had this incredible falsetto—could just hit those notes. And he was a few notes away from being sober.

He started talking to me about Jesus.

I pushed back with my spiritual-not-religious drill.

He listened. Nodded. Then he said, “Alastair, I hope you know one day how much Jesus loves you like I know how much he loves me.”

I wanted to say, “Look at you. You’re in a worse state than I am right now. And you’re talking about Jesus loving you?”

But I didn’t.

What he said messed with me. I’ve never been able to forget it.

A few months later, everything I’d been working toward fell apart.

My band was on the verge of a record deal—the thing we’d been chasing for years—and then they decided they needed a better singer.

The problem was that I was the singer.

Deep down, I didn’t disagree. It was their shot. I think that’s what made it hurt: the truth. Not being good enough.

I was done. With music. With searching. With all of it.

Late one night, I was driving down the Pat Bay Highway at 2 AM. I took my hands off the wheel.

“If there’s a God,” I said to the empty car, “I mean it. If you don’t show up, I’m done.”

Then I had a thought. But it felt like it had been dropped into my head from somewhere else: Put your hands back on the wheel.

I did.

Then more thoughts. Turn left. Turn right. Turn right again. Turn left.

I followed them. Maybe it was just my subconscious in self-preservation mode. Maybe it was something else. I believe it was.

I ended up in a parking lot I’d never been to. Beyond the lot was woods. Beyond the woods was ocean.

I felt like I was supposed to walk into those woods.

I did.

It was terrifying. I was alone. I had no idea what I would find. I kept walking until it was too dark to go further.

I stopped.

And then that same thought-drop happened:

Even if the darkness overcomes you, I am with you.

I thought, “I’ve lost my mind.” You know you’re in bad shape when you start thinking in the third person.

But I couldn’t shake it. I’d had some sort of encounter with something more. For the first time in my life.

Three days later, another friend gave me a book. A Christian book.

I’d never read one. I didn’t want to read it. The author in his bio photo was a fat man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. “What on earth could a guy in a Hawaiian shirt teach me about life?”

She convinced me.

I hated parts of it. But it was the first time I’d read anything about Jesus for myself.

I discovered that Jesus was called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”

A lightbulb went on. That must have been who was with me in the woods. In the darkness. In the uncertainty and hopelessness and confusion of my life. God with me. Even there.

I’d always thought Christianity was for people who drew within the lines. But when I encountered what happened in those woods—I wasn’t okay. I didn’t have my life together. I was falling apart and taking others down with me.

I didn’t deserve God.

But apparently that was the point.

Greg was right.

Eventually, I became a follower of Jesus. Gradually, like someone learning to see in the dark.

That was over twenty years ago.

And I’m still finding God in unexpected places.

More recently, I was hiking the Echo Rock Canyon Trail in Glen Eyrie, Colorado. I reached an open clearing—rolling pastures, billowing clouds, snow-capped Rockies with red rocks jutting forth. And at the center: a pile of rubble.

The remnants of an old building. Strange to discover uncollected garbage in the middle of all this beauty. But within the rubble, Desert Spoon stood tall and golden.

It felt like an altar.

I was tempted to take my shoes off. Then a song came on my playlist, sung to Jesus about the complications of his church: “Do you ever feel misunderstood by what this thing has become?”

That week I’d been in meetings discussing the future of the church. At times, I didn’t know what to make of the complicated thing that the church is. It can feel like a heap of rubble that includes all my best and good works.

But standing there, I felt it: we’re surrounded by the grace and love of God. I was overwhelmed. Joy like waking from sleep, wiping the haze from my eyes.

I picked up a discarded rubber band. Put it on my wrist. A reminder.

Even if our best efforts turn to rubble—God is still there.

God with us.

At nineteen, I was stumbling through the Uplands golf course in the dark, looking for a murdered bride in a wedding dress, crying somewhere in the shadows.

I never found her.

But I’ve kept looking. For transcendence. For presence. For signs that there’s something more than what we can see.

I still hunt for ghosts in a way. But now I know what I’m looking for.

God in the rubble. God in the woods at 2 AM when everything’s fallen apart. God in a Hawaiian shirt. God on a purple couch. God in the cold waiting for a dead bride who never shows.

I still haven’t seen a ghost.

But I’ve learned something: the world is haunted by grace.

Advent strikes me as an honest season. While the rest of the year we think about resurrection and new life and victory, Advent asks us to sit with darker themes—waiting, longing, mortality. Fleming Rutledge writes that the traditional Advent themes are what she calls “the last things”: death, judgment, heaven, hell. Not exactly the stuff of cheerful December gatherings. But maybe that’s exactly what we need as the year winds down and the darkness lengthens.

I’ve been thinking about endings lately. About the things we build that don’t last.

This past summer, I was in Sequim—outside Port Angeles for those who don’t know the Olympic Peninsula. We were there with friends, and our kids built an incredible fort on the beach. They dug deep into the sand, gathered driftwood, added grass to the roof. They spent most of the daylight outside in that fort.

Then … we had to ask the kids to take the fort apart—a neighbour complained that we were taking driftwood that should stay put. The kids pushed back hard. They didn’t want to destroy what they’d spent hours creating.

But things have an end.

That fort—so solid that morning with its deep foundations and thick walls—was gone in minutes. Nothing left but smooth sand and scattered driftwood. Hours of careful work, returned to the beach that made it.

Suddenly I was thinking about more than just forts.

The Truth We’re All Avoiding

My late friend Isaac was a brilliant preacher. One Sunday, he put up a slide that simply read: Your Birth Year – 20__

He paused. Looked right at us:

“Death will fill in the blank.”

Then he read these words from a prayer attributed to Moses: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12).

I remember thinking, “Isaac, that’s heavy for a Sunday morning.” But Isaac wasn’t trying to bring us down. He was trying to wake us up.

Here’s the wisdom I want to sit with this Advent: If we want any shot at real wisdom, we have to face the one truth our culture works overtime to help us avoid.

We’re going to die.

This lands differently for each of us. The other day, my twelve-year-old said, “Dad, thinking about death feels so different now than when I was little. Back then it didn’t really make sense. But now...” She didn’t finish the thought.

Death makes us uncomfortable. It makes us grieve. But it can also make us grateful—and even help us glorify God.

The Delusion We All Believe

We live by what I call the agreed-upon delusion: we’ll deal with death later. Much later. Way later. Maybe never. It’s the elephant in the room we’ve collectively decided to ignore. We organize our entire lives around this delusion.

A few years ago, Julia and I realized we should probably have a will—you know, since we have things like children and a few assets. An estate lawyer in our church offered to help us pro-bono. We had our initial meeting. Got most of the paperwork done. But then came the homework—sections we had to fill out ourselves. All those worst-case scenarios. Pull-the-plug-or-not situations. End-of-life decisions.

Neither Julia nor I wanted those conversations—so we didn’t. It took us two years to finish our will. Two years! By the time we showed up for that second meeting, our lawyer charged us—because pro-bono offers have expiration dates too.

We postpone the important conversations. We delay pursuing what matters most. We act like we have unlimited time to figure everything out.

We don’t. The timer is counting down.

Globally, the average life expectancy is 73 years. About 26,780 days. And that’s if you make it that long. It’s not guaranteed. You might get more. You might get less. But there will be an end.

Ecclesiastes forces us to face this reality. The author—traditionally thought to be Solomon in his later years—looks at life with unflinching honesty:

“Meaningless, meaningless! Everything is meaningless!”

But this isn’t just an existential crisis. The Hebrew word translates better as vapour or mist. Solomon is saying: “Vapour! Mist! Everything will not last!”

He’s not being pessimistic—he’s being realistic. Our lives are brief. Our achievements fade. The promotion we worked so hard for will be forgotten. The house we spent years perfecting will someday be sold to strangers. The relationships we treasure will end. The beach fort will be torn down.

This might sound depressing—but it’s liberating. When we stop living by the delusion of unlimited time, we start living by the wisdom of numbered days.

The delusion whispers: “You have all the time in the world.”

Wisdom shouts: “The clock is ticking! Wake up to what matters!”

This is why Jesus talked about time with such urgency—not to create anxiety, but to cut through our delusions:

“Seek first the kingdom of God.”

“What good is it if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?”

“Today is the day of salvation.”

Jesus understood what we forget: time is our most precious and limited resource.

We all know this, deep down. When we’re at a funeral, we remember. When we get a diagnosis, we remember. When we hold our newborn child, we remember—this is precious because it won’t last forever.

But then we go back to our routines and forget. We slip back into the delusion.

What if we didn’t? What if we lived each day remembering that our days are numbered?

Daring Honesty

“Teach us to number our days...”

The Psalm gives us a clue: we need to be taught. We need help seeing clearly. Left to ourselves, we’ll keep living in the delusion.

The Psalm calls us to daring honesty—the courage to face uncomfortable truths about our lives. Daring honesty means admitting you don’t have unlimited time to waste on things that don’t matter. It means acknowledging that the grudge you’re holding might outlast the relationship if you don’t deal with it. It means recognizing that the dream you keep postponing might never happen if you don’t act soon.

But daring honesty goes deeper than time management. It means facing the truth about our own limitations, our own mortality, our own desperate need for something beyond ourselves.

A few years ago, I found myself in a prolonged season of depression. Everything felt flat, meaningless, empty. I struggled to find any sense of joy or purpose. In that dark season, I opened my Bible to Ecclesiastes, and for the first time, those words didn’t sound depressing—they sounded honest.

“Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!”

Finally, someone was telling the truth about how life felt. But as I kept reading, I discovered something remarkable. The same book that forced me to face the vapor-like nature of existence also celebrated the possibility of joy.

Ecclesiastes says:

“There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.”

And again:

“Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do.”

That’s daring honesty: life is vapor, but God still offers us joy. Your days are numbered, but each numbered day can be filled with good gifts. You can’t control how long you live, but you can control how you live.

This is what the Hebraic wisdom tradition demands. Unlike mystical traditions that promise secret knowledge or esoteric insights, biblical wisdom is refreshingly earthy and practical. It says: face the truth about your life here on earth, in your body, in your relationships, in your limited time.

When we stop pretending we have unlimited time, something beautiful happens: each day becomes illuminated as a gift. Each conversation becomes more precious. Each ordinary moment becomes an opportunity for gratitude.

I think about those mornings when our children were toddlers and everyone was sick. The house was a disaster—dishes everywhere, laundry strewn about, remnants of breakfast scattered across the table. But in that tight-knit circle on the couch, with Julia and the girls laughing together despite their coughs and sniffles—joy was there. Not because circumstances were perfect, but because life was happening. Real life, messy life, numbered life.

That’s what daring honesty teaches us: you don’t have to wait for perfect circumstances to choose joy. You just have to wake up to the gift of today.

The daring honesty of numbered days doesn’t lead to despair—it leads to gratitude and joy. When you truly understand that today is not guaranteed, you stop taking today for granted.

Some of the most joyful people I know have faced their mortality most directly. They’ve counted the cost, numbered their days, and discovered that limited time makes everything more beautiful, not less. They’ve learned the secret Moses discovered in this psalm: the wisdom of mortality is the gateway to the joy of being truly alive.

The Heart of Wisdom

“...that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

This ancient prayer of Moses points us directly to Jesus—the ultimate example of someone who numbered his days and gained a heart of wisdom.

Jesus lived with constant awareness that his time was limited. “My hour has not yet come,” he said early in his ministry. And then, when the time came: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He walked toward Jerusalem knowing exactly what awaited him. He lived every day with the cross in view.

But this awareness of his numbered days didn’t make Jesus grim or anxious. It made him wise. It gave him crystal clarity about what mattered most. It enabled him to say no to good things so he could say yes to the best things.

When we gain a heart of wisdom, we start to live like Jesus lived—with urgency about what matters and peace about what doesn’t.

But here’s what makes this challenging for us: our culture has turned the pursuit of happiness into a religion. We’re constantly sold formulas for joy, steps to fulfillment, systems for optimal living. Just organize your closet the right way, follow the right morning routine, optimize your productivity—and happiness will follow.

Wisdom laughs at our formulas. Wisdom knows something our culture doesn’t: you can’t optimize your way to joy any more than you can organize your way to eternity.

The heart of wisdom begins with what Proverbs calls “the fear of the Lord”—taking God seriously, recognizing that he is God and we are not. This isn’t cowering in terror; it’s coming to terms with reality.

God’s days are not numbered. Ours are.

God’s wisdom is perfect. Ours is limited.

God’s love is eternal. Our time to receive and give that love is brief.

During that season of depression, I flipped through my worn Bible to Ephesians—a letter I had read many times. But Scripture has a way of refusing to become overly familiar. I couldn’t understand how I had missed these words: we are “being filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

In my journal, I wrote: “A full life is the fullness of God.”

This became my lifeline—not because it gave me a formula for happiness, but because it reminded me of the source of true fullness. When my emotional life was flat and joyless, I could still hold onto this hope: God’s fullness is available even in my emptiness.

That’s the heart of wisdom: knowing where to go when our own resources run out. Our own resources always run out because our days are numbered. But God’s resources never run out. His mercies are new every morning. His love endures forever. His wisdom is available to all who ask.

James tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” God’s generosity knows no bounds, because he has already given us his Son, who embodies wisdom for us.

The heart of wisdom learns to receive each numbered day as a gift from the God whose days are not numbered. It learns to find joy not in perfect circumstances but in the perfect faithfulness of God.

When Jesus faced his final numbered days in the Garden of Gethsemane, he sweat drops of blood as he prayed three times: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”

This is the heart of wisdom in action—surrendering our limited understanding to God’s unlimited love. Even when the path gets narrow, even when the cost gets high, even when we can’t see how the story ends.

Advent Wisdom

Numbering our days doesn’t make life feel shorter—it makes each day feel fuller. When you stop living by the delusion of unlimited time, you start living by the wisdom of limited time well spent.

Maybe this is why the church gives us Advent each year—this season of honest waiting, of acknowledging darkness before we celebrate light, of confronting mortality before we proclaim new birth. We need to be reminded that our days are numbered. We need to practice facing what we’d rather avoid.

My friend Bernice would often answer the question “How are you, really?” by saying with the most genuine smile, sometimes through teary eyes, “I’m just so happy to be here.” After decades walking through addiction and recovery, after facing her own mortality many times, she had gained a heart of wisdom. Every ordinary moment was a gift.

Your birth year was 19__ or 20__. Death will fill in the blank of your last year. But between now and then, you have today. You have this moment. You have the opportunity to gain a heart of wisdom.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And wisdom—real wisdom, the kind that comes from numbered days and honest hearts—is the beginning of the most joyful life imaginable.

Here’s what Isaac understood, what Moses knew, what Jesus demonstrated: when we truly face the fact that our days are numbered, we don’t become more afraid of death—we become more alive to life.

Which brings me back to that fort on the beach. Hours of work, returned to sand and driftwood in minutes. Maybe that’s not tragedy. Maybe that’s just truth. Everything we build here is temporary. Every structure we create will eventually return to the elements.

But the joy of building? The laughter of children working together? The beauty of driftwood arranged just so? Those moments happened. They were real. And numbered days don’t make them less precious—they make them more.

So where are you living by the delusion of unlimited time? What conversation are you postponing? What joy are you waiting for perfect circumstances to embrace? What wisdom are you too busy to receive?

Advent gives us permission to ask hard questions. To face uncomfortable truths. To number our days.

And in numbering them, to discover they’re more precious than we ever imagined.

Three chapters of Scripture have been on my heart for years now: 1 Samuel 24, 25, and 26—ninety-one verses. Three locations: a cave, a wilderness, a desert. Three encounters that reveal something about what it means to become who we are in the small moments when we think nobody’s watching.

The Wilderness of Maon

Let’s start in the middle—in the wilderness of Maon, with a man whose mother named him Nabal. Which is a bit shocking. Nabal literally means “fool.” What’s the backstory there? Did she hold that baby, look around the room, and think, “Anyone else seeing what I’m seeing here?” Or was she just really upset with her husband?

Either way, Nabal lived up to his name. Scripture says he was “harsh and badly behaved”—not exactly the legacy you want carved on your tombstone. He was also spectacularly wealthy: 3,000 sheep, 1,000 goats. And it was shearing season, which meant feast time, profit time, ego time.

His wife Abigail, by contrast, was “discerning and beautiful.” This is a marriage so uneven you can see the tilt from miles away.

Enter David.

Not yet King David—this is David in exile, wandering with 600 hungry men, fleeing from Saul’s murderous jealousy. David hears about Nabal’s feast and sends messengers with a reasonable request: We protected your shepherds. Share what you have. Peace be with you.

Nabal’s response is a seven-layer dip of contempt:

“Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse?” (Everyone knows who David is. That’s like saying, “Beyoncé? Never heard of her.”) He accuses David of rebellion against Saul—which cuts deep—and piles up the pronouns: “Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat?” Nabal speaks as if the world were a small room and he stood at the center of it.

Everyone has a breaking point. David’s arrives right here: “Every man strap on his sword.”

Four hundred men set out with one intent: to slaughter every male in Nabal’s household by morning. Maybe a slight overreaction.

But then comes Abigail.

She hears what’s happening and acts—no panic, no delay, just wisdom in motion. She gathers provisions, rides out to intercept David, and falls at his feet. What follows is the longest speech by any woman recorded in Scripture, and it’s worth reading in full. But here are the highlights:

“On me alone, my lord, be the guilt. Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he... The Lord has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand... The Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord.”

Abigail takes Nabal’s foolishness on herself.
She names the sin.
She reminds David of God’s calling.

And then comes the key line:

“The Lord has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand.”

She offers David not just food, but a future—a conscience without blood on it.

David’s response is a threefold blessing:

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand!”

Abigail goes home in peace. Nabal feasts, drinks, collapses. Ten days later, the Lord strikes him down. David marries Abigail.

The scene ends.

Great story. Dramatic.

But why is it here?

The Cave at En-Gedi

To understand Maon, we need to rewind to the chapter before—to the cave at En-Gedi. Before Nabal, there was Saul.

David started out as Saul’s golden boy. He killed Goliath, won battles, became the people’s song. Then Saul’s jealousy grew teeth. He threw spears. He sent David into battles designed to kill him. He killed the priests who helped David escape. He took David’s wife from him. One moment Saul was weeping, the next moment murderous.

David had every human reason to hate Saul.

So here’s the setup: Saul is hunting David with 3,000 men. Saul enters a cave to relieve himself. (Yes, the Bible is that real.) David and his men are hiding in that very cave. Saul has no idea.

Thus begins the great ethical dilemma: Is it okay, is it right, is it permissible to kill someone while they’re going to the bathroom?

(I truly believe this could be an awesome play. If you do too, let’s write the script together).

David’s men whisper the obvious: “This is God’s deliverance. After all Saul has done to you—the spears, the betrayal, forcing you to live like an animal—God has given him to you. Take matters into your own hands.”

David approaches with a blade ... and only cuts the corner of Saul’s robe. Even that small act pierces his conscience: “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord’s anointed.”

Once Saul leaves, David steps outside and shows him the fragment.:

“See, my father, see the corner of your robe in my hand. I cut off the corner and did not kill you. You may know there is no wrong or treason in my hands. I have not sinned against you, though you hunt my life to take it.”

Saul says:

“You are more righteous than I, for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil. May the Lord reward you with good for what you have done to me this day.”

This is David at his finest.

Despite years of mistreatment, despite justified anger, despite opportunity and encouragement, David refuses to return evil for evil. He trusts God to work out his justice and his plan.

That’s what happens right before Maon.

The Desert of Ziph

Now let’s fast-forward past Maon to what comes after—to the desert of Ziph in chapter 26.

Saul is hunting David again. You’d think he’d be done after the bathroom incident. But no—3,000 men, same madness. Late in the evening, David sneaks into Saul’s camp. Saul’s spear stands by his sleeping head. David’s companion urges him to end it. David refuses—again. He takes the spear, not the life.

David reveals himself to Saul—again. Saul repents—again. But this time he adds something new:

“I have sinned … Behold, I have acted foolishly, and have made a great mistake.”

Saul calls himself a fool.
He didn’t say that the first time.
Where have we heard that before?

The Big Picture

Step back now. Take in all three chapters together:

En-Gedi: David spares Saul after years of betrayal.
Maon: David nearly murders Nabal—the fool—after one insult.
Ziph: David spares Saul again—Saul, the fool.

Here’s the question that cracks open an interesting angle to the story:

What if David had crossed the line with Nabal?
Would he have spared Saul the second time?
Kill one fool, kill another?

There are no small moments

Maybe David thinks, “Saul is the real test. Nabal is just a fool. This doesn’t count.” But there are no small moments of obedience—only small moments that determine the big moments. Every act of restraint or revenge is forming you.

You don’t rise, you default

The big moments don’t make you. They reveal what you’ve already become. We don’t suddenly become holy in high-stakes moments. We fall back to who we have quietly become.

You won’t suddenly be patient with your spouse when you’re habitually impatient with strangers. You won’t suddenly control your tongue in important conversations when you don’t in small ones. You won’t suddenly resist big temptations when you’ve been indulging little ones all along.

Consider the contrast: Saul spent years attempting murder, destroying David’s life, hunting him relentlessly. David spared him. Nabal insulted David once, refused hospitality, said mean things. David nearly massacred his entire household.

If David crosses the bloodshed line with someone who merely insulted him, what stops him from crossing it with someone who actually tried to murder him?

You don’t cross a line once and walk away unchanged.
The justification gets easier.
The threshold gets lower.
The restraint gets weaker.

Every small act is a big one

When you restrain your tongue with the fool, you’re preparing to restrain it with the king. When you show kindness to the insignificant, you’re building capacity for kindness to the significant. The way you handle Nabal shapes how you’ll handle Saul.

Our obedience matters

Where do you think your obedience doesn’t matter?

We’re tempted to think it doesn’t matter:

• When no one’s watching—the content we consume, the way we treat service workers, the corners we cut.

• When the person seems insignificant—the fool, not the king; the difficult family member, not the respected boss.

• When we feel justified: “They started it,” “I’m just standing up for myself,” “I don’t need to deal with this.” When it’s just once: “This won’t become a pattern,” “This moment won’t define me.”

But it does matter.

Who you are becoming is being shaped right now—in the small irritations, the minor slights, the moments you think no one sees. These aren’t exceptions to your character. They are your character.

And somewhere—maybe tomorrow, maybe years from now—there will be a Saul moment. A moment that feels enormous. A moment where everything is on the line. And you will not rise to meet it. You will be what you have been becoming all along.

So be faithful now. Not later. Now.

But if we stop at obedience, we would all be undone.

Obedience Can’t Clean the Heart

Here’s what the passage also shows us: violence was brewing in David’s heart. It was in there. And David didn’t stop it. Abigail says, “The Lord has restrained you.” Left to himself, this story would have ended very differently.

And if we look at the big picture, we see that obedience can’t clean our hearts. Because David—this exemplary David at his finest—fails later.

Bathsheba.
Uriah.
Blood on his hands.

Someone asked me recently: How many bad decisions are you away from ruining your life?

One.

That’s the honest answer.

Even the very best of us break. Sooner or later, we fail. The Nabal or the Saul or the Bathsheba moment comes, and we don’t always have an Abigail to stop us.

Abigail Reveals the Heart of Christ

But Abigail is the heartbeat of this passage. Look closely at what she does:

She bows before David at his very worst—when violence is brewing in his heart, when 400 armed men are marching toward slaughter. She doesn’t wait for David to calm down or come to his senses. She intercepts him in his rage.

She takes the utter foolishness of Nabal’s sin on herself: “On me alone be the guilt.” Not “let me explain my husband’s behavior” or “he didn’t mean it.” She absorbs the guilt. She makes Nabal’s foolishness her own burden.

She brings provision—not just food for hungry men, but a future. She reminds David of who he is and who he is called to be: “The Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord.” In other words: Don’t throw away your future on this fool. Don’t let this moment define you.

She prevents sin from overcoming him: “The Lord has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand.” She names what’s happening—David is about to take salvation into his own hands, to work out his own justice, to become his own deliverer.

And then, after all this, she becomes his bride.

Do you see it? Abigail reveals to us the heart of Christ.

Jesus comes to us at our worst—not after we’ve cleaned ourselves up or gotten our act together. He meets us in our rage, our violence, our self-destruction. He bows before us, which is to say, He takes on flesh and dwells among us.

He takes the utter foolishness of our sin upon his shoulders and says, “On me alone be the guilt.” Not figuratively. Not symbolically. Fully. He absorbs what we’ve done. He makes our foolishness His burden.

He brings provision—the gift of grace and his Spirit, the power to overcome what we cannot overcome on our own. He reminds us of who we are: beloved, called, made for something more than this small vengeance, this petty destruction, this grasping for control.

He restrains us from trying to work salvation with our own hands. This is the heart of the gospel, isn’t it? We are prone—like David marching toward Nabal’s house—to think we can save ourselves. That if we just obey hard enough, believe hard enough, try hard enough, we can earn our way to righteousness. That we can clean our own hearts.

But we can’t.

A message about obedience—left on its own—will crush us.

This is why we need Jesus to intervene.
To stop us from trying to save ourselves.
To restrain us from working salvation with our own hands.

And here’s the scandalous beauty:
He makes us his own.
We become his bride.

Not after we’ve proven ourselves. Not after we’ve demonstrated consistent obedience. But while we are still prone to march toward our own destruction.

Our obedience still matters—but differently now.

Not as the means of salvation, but as the response to it. Not as the fuel that earns God’s love, but as the fruit of having received it.

Bound in the Bundle of the Living

The longer I walk this Christian journey, the more I want to be obedient. Not externally obedient while my heart rages. I want the obedience of the heart. And there’s both comfort and discomfort in this desire.

The comfort: that I even want to be like Jesus. That’s not natural. It’s a sign his Spirit is working in me. I’m thankful for the encounter in Maon—Abigail gives me great hope that my life can reflect and even reveal Christ.

The discomfort: the more I pursue obedience, the more I see just how much sin there is within me. It’s as if God, in his grace, lets us see our sin gradually—because if we could see what he sees all at once, it would wreck us. But Christian maturity includes this growing awareness of just how sinful we are. Yet we also grow in our awareness of the inexhaustible depths of grace. This is the paradox of Christian maturity: the more you grow, the more you need the gospel.

In her speech to David, Abigail says something I’d missed for years:

“Your life shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the Lord your God.”

This is utterly true of David—through every high and low, through En-Gedi and Maon and Ziph, through his finest moments and his devastating failures, he remains bound in the bundle of the Lord’s care. And it’s true of us. Our lives are bound in the bundle of the care of the Lord.

Yes, even David breaks. We all break. Which is why the story ultimately turns our eyes to Christ. Because unlike David, who needed Abigail to restrain him, Jesus doesn’t need restraining. He is the one who restrains us. He is the one who intervenes. He is the one who takes our guilt and says, “On me alone.”

Like David, we can say:

Blessed be the Lord.
Blessed be his discretion.
Blessed be Jesus—
who keeps us from bloodguilt
and from working salvation with our own hands.

May that blessedness be the fuel for our obedience.

Time slips by. We hadn’t planned to take a summer break from Ordinary Matters, yet here we are—it’s already fall. Thank you for your patience!

This summer was filled with visits from friends abroad, a bit of local travel, and plenty of delight in the beauty of our island and the gift of family life. As September began, like many families, we fumbled our way back into regular rhythms. I also helped launch a new project at Coastline—something I’ve been quietly working on for the past year: the Ascend program. It’s a ten-month gap year for high school graduates who want to pause and discern their vocation and calling. Our first cohort includes eight students, and working with them has been a surprising joy. Additionally, I’m teaching a bachelor’s-level course called The Drama of Scripture, which drew ninety participants (including our Ascend and Coastline College students). Together with other commitments, all of this has kept me quite busy.

The Gift of Watching Closely

Although I’ve been a bit distant from Ordinary Matters this summer, I’ve still been paying attention—to life, to God’s work, and to the ways small acts of attentiveness can open unexpected doors. Which is why my mind keeps returning to the posture of Moses’ sister:

Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”

“Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

I love that line: “His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.”

Distant, yet attentive.

If you’re unfamiliar with Exodus, the story begins with Abraham’s descendants—the people of Israel—suffering under the crushing hand of Pharaoh. Intimidated by their growing numbers, he pressed them into bitter labor. Worse still, he decreed that every newborn Hebrew boy be killed. It’s a bleak backdrop. And yet, amid that darkness, two midwives—Shiphrah and Puah—rise as unexpected heroines. Fearing God, they refused to obey Pharaoh’s command and allowed the boys to live.

Turn the page, and another heroine emerges: Moses’ sister, quietly taking her place in God’s unfolding redemptive story. (As an aside: the opening chapters of Exodus are full of women whose courage and attentiveness propel God’s redemptive story forward—midwives, mothers, sisters, even Pharaoh’s daughter).

I want to ask: what if Moses’ sister she hadn’t dared to linger there, watching from a distance?

I imagine Pharaoh’s daughter still would have rescued the child—but Moses’ mother would have missed the unthinkable grace of holding her son again. The warmth of his small body against hers. The sound of his cry quieted at her breast. The chance to love and nurture him for a little while longer.

I want to be like Moses’ sister: present and attentive, even if at a distance, watching with patience and hope—ready to step in when the moment comes to join in God’s redeeming work. I doubt she knew that her presence would be an intervention of grace.

An Ordinary Not-So-Ordinary Story

What might it look like to pay attention—to wait and see what will happen—in the ordinary flow of our lives?

About a year ago, I received an unexpected Facebook message from a woman doing genealogy research for her grandfather. At first, I assumed it was spam. But as I paid closer attention, I sensed she was sincere. Long story short, we uncovered a startling family secret: my paternal grandfather had been married before my grandmother—a fact none of his children had known, even fifty years after his death. Which meant my dad had a half-brother he had never met.

I was able to help make some introductions. And just this month, my parents traveled to the United Kingdom, where my dad met his half-brother for the very first time.

Of course, this is an unusual story of paying attention. The simple act of noticing has power. In my family’s case, it was the mutual attentiveness of myself and, not so randomly, a woman who turned out to be my half-first cousin once removed (let every genealogist rejoice) that dismantled decades of distance. In Exodus, the attentive courage of Moses’ sister became part of God’s work to dismantle oppression itself. To be clear, estrangement in a family is not the same as the oppression Israel endured under Pharaoh—one is far more severe and devastating. Yet both reveal the glory of our God, who liberates the oppressed and reunites the estranged.

So again I ask: what might it look like to pay attention—to wait and see what will happen—in the ordinary flow of our lives?

I am certain we will see God’s redemptive story unfolding in our midst—especially in those ordinary places that become the stage for extraordinary grace.

I wonder—where has attentiveness opened a door for you? Where have you stood at a distance, watched, and caught a glimpse of God’s redeeming work?

This is the story Dr. Esther Lightcap Meek shared to illustrate her life’s work: real knowing isn’t about collecting information—it’s about entering relationship.

Dr. Meek is a philosopher who has spent her career asking one of the best questions: How do you know what you know? She’s Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Geneva College and author of influential books including A Little Manual for Knowing and Doorway to Artistry.

In our conversation, we explore how the modernist approach to knowledge—treating it as information to be collected—is actually killing our capacity to truly know anything. Esther argues for what she calls “covenant epistemology,” where we pledge ourselves to the yet-to-be-known and discover that reality itself is welcoming us first. When we realize that we love in order to know, everything changes about how we approach learning, creativity, and even our relationship with God.

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from wonder, struggled with the limits of purely rational approaches to faith, or sensed that there’s something more to knowing than accumulating facts, this conversation offers a different way forward. It’s an opportunity to discover what Esther calls the “loving to know mindset”—and to realize that you’ve been doing it all your life.

Twenty-five years ago, I walked through the doors of the Young building at Camosun College as a student in REL102: Religions of the East. I wanted nothing to do with Christianity back then. It seemed irrelevant, perhaps even offensive to my “spiritual but not religious” worldview.

Last week, I stepped back inside that same building for the first time in a quarter-century. But this time, I wasn’t avoiding Christianity. I was a guest speaker for REL100: Religions of the West, spending two hours with students talking about the very faith I’d once dismissed but now embrace.

I never could have seen this twist coming.

And I’m so grateful for it.

The joy of God playing the long game.

What you’ll hear in the recording below is my attempt to answer an essential question:

Why do Christians call their message good news?

Speaking to a classroom of college students—many likely as skeptical as I once was—I walk through the core claims of Christianity, not to prove or disprove them, but to help people understand what Christians actually believe and why.

Standing in that Camosun classroom, speaking to students who reminded me of my younger self, I was struck again by the audacious nature of the Christian claim: that in a world marked by division, despair, and brokenness, the death and resurrection of a first-century Jewish carpenter represents the best news imaginable.

That’s a claim worth understanding, whether you ultimately embrace it or not.

Then you check social media.

Maybe you shouldn’t have.

Instead of collective appreciation, you find a digital feeding frenzy—everyone trashing this woman, using her vulnerability as an opportunity to shame her. And it hits you:

This is why nobody wants to be humble anymore.

This is the story A.J. Swoboda shared with me to open our conversation. A.J. is a theologian, pastor, and author of the brilliant new book A Teachable Spirit (you should definitely read it—I loved it).

A.J. brings wisdom to our cultural moment where humility has become a liability. In our conversation, we explore how to cultivate teachability when vulnerability gets weaponized, why learning from people we disagree with feels so threatening, and why the early Christians were so radical precisely because they were learners.

One of my favourite new insights: A.J. unpacks how “humble” comes from the Latin humus, meaning dirt … “Humans are dirtbags that just breathe in the breath of God. That's all we are.” There’s something humourous and liberating about remembering what we actually are.

A.J. makes a compelling case that humility is actually strength, and that we practice teachability before we feel it—just like generosity or love. If you’re tired of a cultural moment where admitting ignorance feels dangerous and changing your mind feels like betrayal, this conversation offers a different way forward. It’s an invitation into what A.J. calls “the quiet strength of humility.”

You can learn more about A.J. at his website. I also highly recommend subscribing to his Substack, The Low-Level Theologian, and checking out Slow Theology, the podcast he cohosts with Nijay Gupta.

Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact? — Lesslie Newbigin

Early in the morning, on the day after the Sabbath, a group of tired and grieving women discovered the tomb of Jesus was empty in a garden somewhere in Jerusalem. If the earliest followers of Jesus and the authors of the gospels intended to concoct a false but plausible resurrection story, this detail would have been left out. Women as the first witnesses was a strike against the resurrection for people in the ancient world. “Christianity can’t be true,” declared the Greek philosopher Celsus in the second century, “because the written accounts of the resurrection are based on the testimony of women—and we all know women are hysterical.”

Women in the cultural time and place of the New Testament had a very low social standing. They couldn’t testify in court. Even so, the church publicized that women were the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection despite how it could undermine the credibility of their case. This inconvenient detail could have easily been redacted to help make the resurrection more conceivable (an already difficult feat). Why keep it unless it was what actually took place? The gospel writers don’t twist the facts (although they write with a theological lens), they keep the “embarrassing” details: Mary Magdeline, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, Salome, and possibly some other women discovered the empty tomb. Their unredacted presence at the empty tomb adds to the reliability of the gospels as historical eye-witness testimony.

As the women arrived, burial spices in hand, only to find the stone rolled away, I can’t help but wonder if the aroma of the oil of joy lingered more than the stench of death inside the tomb? An empty tomb is perplexing enough. Who took the body? But, then, an angelic messenger proclaims, “Jesus is not here. He is risen!” Their world turned upside down. This news surely made their minds spin and their hearts leap with cautious hope. Could it be? The women spring from the tomb “with fear and great joy” as the first heralds and preachers of the resurrection. The good news of great joy was first entrusted to women, despite the consequences of how it would be received by their culture. Inequalities begin to unravel in a resurrection world. May we never forget it.

The joy of resurrection.

Leyros!

The women now transformed into gospel preachers returned to where the apostles of Jesus were hiding out in a locked room. Ironically, apostle means sent one. The women fulfill the apostolic vocation as sent ones before the apostles do. Now, imagine this scene. In a hyper-patriarchal society in which women can’t even testify in court, a handful of panicked women rush into the room. They’ve been at the tomb to anoint a dead body with spices. They’re flustered. They’re excited. They seem a little unhinged—a strange fire flickers in their eyes and an unusual even unnerving joy exudes from them. I doubt the women could catch their breath. They try to get the words out. Gasping for air, winded, they say:

“He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive!”

“Who’s alive?” asks the apostles.

“Jesus! He is risen!”

The apostles don’t buy it. Why would they? In the economy of the world, dead stuff stays dead. “They did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense” recounts the gospel of Luke. This is a bashful translation. The word is Leyros. Nonsense? An idle tale? It meant garbage or drivel or crap. “Humbug,” if you’re scrooge. “Bollocks,” if you’re British. Or as professor Anna Carter Florence bluntly puts it, the apostles essentially say, “Bullshit.” (She said it not me).

That’s more like it isn’t it?

It’s raw and honest. A bodily resurrection? Leyros! Reduce it to a “spiritual” resurrection at the very least, a nice palpable idea, or perhaps a grief induced hallucination. Dead people—truly dead people—stay dead. How else are you supposed to respond other than saying Leyros? This is our default reflex. It’s how I responded when I first heard about the resurrection as a teenager. It’s not the kind of thing that happens in our world—until it did.

Here’s the thing: when we talk about resurrection, if it doesn’t sound implausible, if it doesn’t make us sound like we’ve lost our minds, if it doesn’t make people want to reject it for its absurdity, then we aren’t truly proclaiming it. Because if the resurrection is true, our world crumbles. All our categories of how the world is supposed to function fall apart. A supposed “spiritual” resurrection can’t have this effect. It’s an ideal that may change people but not the fabric of creation. Only the historical, physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus proves just how much “matter matters to God.”1⁴ The resurrection is a deep, soulful, and joyful Yes to the world God has made—especially toward us.

The problem is the apostles reasonably believe they’re living in a tragedy. Crucifixion has the final word. The power of Rome reigns. It’s the age-old story of the world. Behind the scenes, however, joy quietly does her work to set the apostles up for the punchline. Because they’re living in a divine comedy. Resurrection has stepped up to the microphone.

The joy of a comedy so good it makes us say Leyros.

Confounding Joy

The resurrection is bewildering to our nature and experience of the world. But there is the option of suspending our cynicism to consider the empty tomb. That’s what the apostle Peter did. He said Leyros alongside everyone else. Yet Peter decided to see for himself. He runs to the tomb. Actually, it was a race against the apostle John who beat him to the tomb (a point John seems to delight in making in his gospel).

The joy of a harmless jab that turns into Holy Writ.

Peter throws his energy into finding out if the tomb really is empty, if the resurrection could be true. Joy quietly stirs a giant What if? in his soul. That’s why Peter retraces the steps left by the women. He looks inside the tomb. Empty. The burial linens are folded up. Peter confirms it (although he does not yet realize death has been tidily defeated).

Not much time passes before Jesus appears to his apostles huddled together in their locked room. The resurrected Jesus somehow steps into the locked room and says, “Peace be with you.” It has the opposite effect. Of course it did. The apostles are frightened, they think Jesus is a ghost.

The joy of messing with your disciples a little bit.

This is the same Jesus but different too. He has the wounds of crucifixion in his resurrected body. He eats meals but can also (presumably) walk through walls. The disciples are face to face with Jesus but “they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement.⁶” Resurrection in the hands of joy confounds us with bewilderment. This is joy that does not make sense but rises up in us like a new day. This is the joy of Jesus dancing his way out of the tomb in victory—death is unraveling and will soon die. Because life, goodness, and joy—oh, yes, joy!—these things endure. Resurrection joy is stirred by the truth that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.⁷

The apostles do not come to their senses. That’s not accurate. They come to a new sense of reality. Leyros is wiped away and now they are “overjoyed.” This kind of joy fills the cup and spills over and runs down onto the floor. It is entirely unique to the profession, “We have seen the Lord!”

At some point, the apostles looked backward. They remembered their evening with Jesus in the upper room. Jesus had much to say to them about joy. They couldn’t understand it at the time when Jesus said, “You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.”⁹ On the other side of the resurrection it started to make sense. Just as the joy of a child being born is paved by anguish, the grief of Christ’s crucifixion births joy. This is a one-of-a-kind joy. The joy of death and resurrection. The grief of the disciples beholding a crucified Messiah, the death of a beloved friend, the terminus station of their hopes and dreams transformed into the joy of encountering Jesus—alive and well! Before his death, Jesus told them, “Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice … and no one will take away your joy.” Why? Because Jesus is alive forever.

The joy of confounding joy turning into unshakeable joy.

The Dance of Resurrection

Yes, the resurrection is initially a confounding joy. How could it be anything else? It’s not the news we expect to hear. But as this good news settles into our souls—as we realize it’s the work of God within history, as we come to see we’re not living in a tragedy but a comedy—we can know deep joy. The joy of resurrection ignites in us when we start to grasp the death and resurrection of Jesus for the first time—or afresh, yet again, once more. We cannot muster joy up or manufacture her, especially in respect to resurrection joy. For the apostles, this unique quality of joy flowed like a river from an ocean of grace after they witnessed the death and resurrection first-hand. Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room, “Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” We do not have to hesitate to pray, Share this joy with me. Do it again, Jesus. But we shouldn’t be surprised if joy sets us up to be on the brink of saying leyros before we’re confounded and then overjoyed with unshakable joy as she dances to the song of resurrection with us.

Many years ago, Julia and I went on a group tour of Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. When you’re in the Holy Land expectations run pretty high. The group we visited with were expecting to encounter Jesus in a unique way. To be fair, it happens. There’s something about expanding your geographic imagination that helps foster a deeper connection to the gospels. On our tour, epiphanies seemed to happen at every turn.

On top of Mount Sinai:

“Oh. It’s so beautiful. Moses received the law here!”

In a boat on the Sea of Galilee:

“Oh. It’s so amazing. Peter walked on water here!”

Brought to tears in the Garden of Gethsemane:

“Oh. It’s so sad. Jesus sweat blood here!”

But for Julia?

Nothing.

The whole trip, she felt like Jesus wasn’t there.

Mount Sinai, he is not here. Sea of Galilee, he is not here. Garden of Gethsemane, he is not here. People were on the cloud nine of religious experiences, “thin places” abounded, but for Julia: Zilch. No epiphanies—just rocks, water, gardens. “He is not here” was her refrain. Julia sincerely wanted to encounter Jesus afresh, because she was in Israel of all places—Jesus breathed this air, walked this soil, felt these waters. She was praying, watching, listening, waiting. Even so, “He is not here.” She couldn’t help but ask, Why not me? I’m sure part of her thought, Is this all just leyros? We can all relate too. It’s one thing to hear about the good news of the resurrection and even believe it. But sometimes we’re left scratching our heads about how we experience resurrection.

On our last day, we visited two sites. Each are contenders for where Jesus may have been buried. One is the Grand Orthodox Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The other is a modest tomb in a small garden just down the street—the last stop of our trip. As we went to this tomb, Julia was somewhat grieved. Times up, Jesus. At this tomb, each person goes in one at a time. I went in. Looked around. I thought, Yup. Looks like a tomb. Headed out. Julia goes in. She takes time. A little while longer. Then, bursting out, full of joy, almost running, shouting to me, “He’s not here! He’s risen! He’s not here, he’s risen! He’s not here, he’s risen!”

There is a little-known Catholic tradition called risus paschalis. It translates to Easter laugh. “It was customary for the parish priest to tell jokes during Eastertide” recounts the Jesuit priest James Martin, “The idea behind it was laughing at Satan, who had been discomfited by the Resurrection.”2 Because in the words of the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh, the resurrection is “a laugh freed, for ever and ever.”3 This kind of holy laughter took a hold of Julia as she recounted her experience to me. Julia told me that she basically had my same experience of the tomb. She looked around, Yup. Looks like a tomb. Then sighed, “He’s not here.” But on the way out of the tomb Julia saw a heavenly sign! It wasn’t an angel but a literal old sign adhered to the exit of the tomb. I had missed it. But Jesus and joy didn’t let Julia miss it:

“He is not here. He is risen.”

When Julia burst forth from that old tomb, I witnessed time stand still. It was as if I saw the original joy of the first women who preached the good news of resurrection. In fact, I did. It was the very same joy. Because joy bursts forth from the heart of God and runs to us proclaiming the confounding good news. Joy danced with Jesus out of the empty tomb, danced with the women preachers on their way to the apostles—and she still dances with us. But joy also loves a good set up so that she can burrow deeper into our souls.

Julia had the first refrain down. But He is not here is the anthem of leyros without the second refrain, He is risen. The full refrain captures the arch of how resurrection joy unfolds in us. From leyros—He is not here—to confounding joy—Where is he?—to overjoyed unshakeable joy—He is risen! When Julia saw the words, He is risen—when the refrain was put back together, the world stopped from a blip of monochromatic sight to full technicolor. Julia came out with an epiphany of her own. But more so, her momentary grief turned into a fresh dose of the unshakeable joy of resurrection.

We’ll never forget it.

Jesus isn’t found in the tomb or on some religious holiday. Julia’s encounter of Jesus wasn’t brought about by geography or some holy relic. The truth is the tomb is empty. What’s so powerful about an old empty tomb? Jesus isn’t there. This is a historical fact. He is not here. He is risen. When Jesus says to his apostles, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” it’s verified. It’s true. This is the most enduring joy we can know on earth. Because as Jesus said, nothing can take resurrection joy away from us.

The joy of resurrection dancing in triumph over death with that mischievous Easter laugh.

Taken from Longing for Joy: An Invitation into the Goodness and Beauty of Life by Alastair Sterne. ©2024 by IVP. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.

BTW: Easter is more than a day …

If you want to join me in celebrating the entire season of Easter, I encourage you to read 50 Days of Joy: An Invitation.

This afternoon, Julia and I took our endlessly energetic Goldendoodle for a long walk. As we strolled beneath trees just beginning to bud, Julia reflected on how she would have approached yesterday’s Good Friday sermon differently. Not that she disagreed with anything I said—but she noticed something I had missed:

The chronological tension of Holy Week.

In my reflection on the temple curtain being torn, I connected it directly to Hebrews—to our access to God through Christ. While theologically true, Julia reminded me that this understanding comes from the other side of Easter—from resurrection and even Pentecost. A fair point—one worth sitting with.

“What if,” she asked, “we sit with what the torn curtain meant on that first Holy Saturday—before anyone knew what Sunday would bring?”

She continued: “What if, at first, the torn curtain didn’t signal access at all? What if it was God, in his grief, tearing the veil like a mourner? What if it symbolized not presence rushing out to meet us, but presence withdrawing—God departing the temple in sorrow?”

That’s a hard point to stay with … isn’t it?

The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar once called Holy Saturday “the day of God’s non-existence in the world.” It’s a jarring phrase. It makes me uncomfortable. But it captures something essential about this day:

The absence of God.

Yes, Good Friday accomplished forgiveness.

Yes, the curtain was torn.

But the proof of that redemption—the receipt, if you will—wasn’t handed over until Easter morning.

And in between?

Silence.

On that first Holy Saturday, perhaps God was nowhere to be found. His presence had left the temple. The Son of God lay dead in the tomb. This is the day when God in Christ experiences death not from a distance, but from the inside. God was not watching from afar—but lying lifeless, entering the fullness of human mortality.

We know the ending.

We’ve read ahead.

But the disciples hadn’t.

The women preparing spices hadn’t.

They lived what Fleming Rutledge calls “the void that cannot be filled with premature consolation.”

Earlier today, I sat in a tattoo parlour tucked in Chinatown, accompanying a friend as she marked one year since a close friend had died. I was there not to fix or distract—but simply to be present. As the needle buzzed and a memorial was etched into her skin, I found myself thinking:

This is a Holy Saturday act—absence, grief, remembrance, and the faint feeling of hope against hope.

There are many such Holy Saturdays in our lives: seasons of grief that feel like abandoned temples, times of doubt that stretch like an endless Saturday, moments when we stand before the torn curtain and see not access, but absence.

Holy Saturday is an interruption.

What would it mean for us to enter into the discomfort and hold still in the dark?

There is sorrowful comfort in knowing that Holy Saturday is as much a part of redemption as the Cross and the Resurrection.

Perhaps what I should have said yesterday is this:

From where we stand—we know the torn curtain means access to God’s presence. But the torn curtain on that first Holy Saturday wasn’t an invitation to rush into the Holy of Holies. Perhaps it calls us to wait at the threshold. To name the absence. To sit with the silence.

Tomorrow is my favourite day of the year.

We will celebrate.

The torn veil now opens a new and living way.

But today?

We acknowledge the God who descended—not just to earth, but to Hades.

The God who entered death.

The God who, for a day, was not found.

And even here—especially here.

We trust.

Or at least, we try to hope.

When we think about Good Friday, we naturally focus on the cross—Jesus’ agony, his sacrifice, the weight of our sin. And rightfully so. But it’s difficult to look at for long. Because the cross scandalizes. It offends.

We proclaim that God in human flesh was crucified. That human sin runs so deep it required wooden beams and iron nails.

Was there no other way? Are we just that tangled in sin?

The apostle Paul said the message of the cross was a stumbling block to the Jews of his time, and foolishness to Gentiles. The Messiah wasn't supposed to die? And how can a man who claims to be God die? But for those willing to face the offence of the cross: they behold that it is the power of God for salvation.

I want us to see God’s power in the scandal of the cross. And to do so, I want to draw our attention to something that happened at the moment of Jesus’ death.

A detail reported by Matthew, Mark, and Luke:

The temple curtain was torn in two.

This seemingly minor detail reveals as much about what happened on Good Friday as the cross itself. There is a deep satisfaction in tearing apart some things: like a large bill finally paid off. Before Christ died, he said, “It is finished.” And with satisfaction, God tore the curtain. When that curtain tore: everything changed. And when we see what this means for us, we too will be satisfied.

We read in Matthew 27:45-51:

"From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" (which means "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") ... And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split."

The Curtain

Unfathomable things unfolded. Nothing is more difficult to comprehend than beholding The Son of God—tortured and crucified—crying out in agony. Alongside him, creation itself responded: darkness covered the land, the earth quaked.

At the very moment Jesus died, something unfolded not only at the cross, but at the heart of Israel's worship—the Temple.

There, what Jesus accomplished in his death was unveiled:

The curtain was torn in two.

The Temple in Jerusalem was built to emphasize distance.

As you moved closer to the centre, access became more restricted—until you reached the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of God’s presence. That innermost space was veiled by an enormous curtain:

Sixty feet tall, thirty wide, and thick as a man's hand.

It shouted a clear message:

“You cannot come any closer.”

Only the high priest could enter—and only once a year, on the Day of Atonement. Even then, it required seclusion, ritual bathing, spotless linen, and a sequence of sacrifices. The high priest carried not just blood—but the hopes of the people to receive forgiveness from God.

Passing through the curtain require all this preparation for one reason:

God's holiness is not to be taken lightly.

God isn’t just holy.

He is Holy, Holy, Holy—utterly other, blindingly pure, and overwhelmingly glorious.

To enter God’s presence irreverently was not just improper—it was deadly.

No one knew this better than the high priest—the only one tasked to enter this sacred and holy space.

Scripture tells us he wore bells on his garment so others could hear if he was still moving inside the Holy of Holies.

Over time, they started tying a rope around the priest’s ankle. That way, if he died before the holiness of God, they could drag him out.

Here’s the point:

The curtain wasn’t just decorative—it was a warning sign declaring:

“The Holiness of God.”

Our Condition

I know we might struggle with this concept of holiness. In our modern world, it’s easier to adopt an irreverent posture: “We don't need to tread fearfully before God—that’s just outdated religious ignorance.” But rather than dismiss God’s holiness as an uninformed ancient fear, what if we pause to consider what holiness reveals: not just about God’s character, but about our own condition?

Because the very fact that we can be dismissive of God's holiness is revealing—isn’t it?

For a moment, I want to turn to a vision given to the prophet Zechariah, some five-hundred years before Jesus was born. Zechariah writes:

“God showed me Joshua the high priest … Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel.”

Given all the protocols to ensure this never happened, this was shocking enough! But it gets even more shocking still:

It wasn’t just any filth.

Years ago, Julia and I adopted a dog named Sammy. She was even a model once!

Don’t let her good looks deceive you. One time, after we left Sammy outside to play, we heard her scratching at the door. When we opened it … she was filthy.

It wasn’t just any filth.

She had found a pile of dung, rolled in it, covered herself entirely. She stood there—looking up at us with pride … completely oblivious.

The Hebrew word used to describe the filth on the high priest is:

Dung.

Imagine the horror!

The high priest, who went through such meticulous procedures to be clean, stands before God like Sammy.

And remember: The High Priest represents the people before God.

This vision is a picture of us before God.

We can approach God thinking we're presentable—perhaps even proud of our accomplishments, proclaiming our own goodness—yet we can be completely unaware that what we consider impressive is filthy in God's sight.

The vision given to Zechariah unveils the contamination of human sinfulness before divine holiness.

It’s uncomfortable.

We’d rather dismiss it.

But that would be a denial of the truth.

I want us to see:

The holiness of God and the sinfulness of humanity.

This is why the curtain existed.

We needed that barrier.

But as we will see, God's intention was always to tear down that barrier. Because God doesn't want to leave us in our sin. Like Julia with Sammy, God does the messy work of cleaning us up. This is why we need to look at one more detail in Zechariah's vision:

The angel said to those who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.” Then he said to Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.”

Do you see?

God provides the cleansing Joshua and the people couldn't accomplish.

Then God says:

Listen, High Priest Joshua … I am going to bring my servant, the Branch … and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.

This is a promise of the coming Messiah.

And until his arrival, five hundred years later, the curtain remained, saying:

“This far and no further.”

That is ... until Good Friday.

When Jesus—the Branch—was broken for us.

The Branch Was Broken For Us

God was true and faithful to the promise revealed to Zechariah: God removed our sin—once and for all time—in a single day. Once again, let’s turn to our passage from the gospel of Matthew:

When Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

The instant Jesus died:

The veil tore before him.

Not after. Not later. The moment Christ gave up his spirit, the barrier was gone—and access was opened. Not because of anything we did—but because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross.

The tearing of the curtain and Christ’s body are inseparably connected. The author of Hebrews helps us connect the dots to see the reason why. He writes:

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings.

When that massive barrier was torn, so was the record of sin that stood against us.

Jesus canceled the record of debt.

Took it all away. Nailing it to the cross.

Our sin was removed—in a single day.

But how does Jesus dying on a cross bring forgiveness?

He took our place. He bore our guilt—absorbing the judgment our sin deserved. This is the mystery of God in Christ, dying for us. He who was without sin became sin that we might become the righteousness of God. We exchanged clothes! He took on our filthy garments and we now wear his fine robes of holiness.

The author Walter Wangerin Jr. wrote a story called Ragman. A man who walked through the city calling, “New rags for old!”

To a weeping woman, he gave a clean cloth, taking her tear-soaked handkerchief. Then he began to weep her tears while she was left without sorrow.

To a bleeding girl, he gave a yellow bonnet, taking her bloodied bandage. Her wound transferred to his forehead.

To a one-armed man, he gave his jacket, leaving the man with two strong arms while the Ragman now had only one.

To a drunk under a ragged blanket, he gave new clothes while wrapping himself in the old.

With each exchange, the Ragman grew weaker—bleeding, limping, burdened. Finally, he collapsed at a landfill and died, surrounded by the rags of others’ suffering.

This is what Christ did on Good Friday.

He became our substitute. He took our rags of sin and suffering upon himself, so we might be made whole.

And this is what Jesus achieved for us on Good Friday.

Unprecedented access!

Into the presence of our Holy, Holy, Holy God.

For centuries, God’s presence was locked behind layers of restriction—one person, once a year, after elaborate rituals and sacrifices. But through his death, Jesus fulfilled the entire system.

The invitation now?

“Let us draw near with confidence.”

Not through some earthly curtain—but through the body of Christ broken and given for us.

This is the miracle of Good Friday.

What Does This Mean For Us Today?

But what does all this mean for us today, right now, in our everyday lives?

“Let us draw near into the presence of the Holy, Holy, Holy God.”

That’s the invitation that only Christ can offer. It feels like a scandal. Because it is! And it changes everything about how we approach God in our daily lives.

When we’re out of hope, out of energy, or out of steam, what do we do?

We don’t look to what we must do but to what Christ has already done.

As James Proctor wrote in his poem It is Finished:

Cast your deadly 'doing' down,
down at Jesus' feet;
Stand in Him,
in Him alone,
gloriously complete.

Some of us carry guilt and shame that clings like a second skin. We feel too far gone—filthy. But the torn curtain says otherwise: Your worst sins are not the final word. You don't have to clean yourself up first—Christ already did. Your access to God doesn't hinge on how good you are or how bad you are, but on his finished work. And now, we are dressed in the fine garments of Christ's holiness—not our own. This is why we have full access to God the Father.

Others of us long for an encounter with God, but we can feel like God is hidden away. But the curtain is gone. In Christ, you are not outside looking in. In Christ, you are already in the Holy of Holies—even when you don’t feel it. Draw near with confidence, not in your experiences, but in what Christ has done!

And when we suffer—when the grief is raw and we ache for answers—what we need most isn't explanation, but presence. The torn curtain means you have that presence. Not a distant deity, but a crucified Saviour who understands pain from the inside.

That’s what Good Friday gives us:

A love that reached all the way down.

A God who tore the veil, silenced the boast of sin and death, and made a way back—forever.

Yes, the cross of Christ is an offence. It exposes us. But as Tim Keller puts it:

We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.

This is the scandal of the cross.

There’s no getting around it.

We can’t find our way to God by avoiding it and looking away.

We can’t find our way to God by trying to walk around it.

We can only enter into the presence of God through the cross.

So: Pass through the curtain.

With confidence.

Today, we celebrate that through the cross of Christ, our access into the presence of our Holy, Holy, Holy God is not just temporarily allowed. It is permanently secured—now and forever.

God, our Father, we stand in awe of what happened on Good Friday. Not just the sacrifice of Jesus—as staggering as that was—but the curtain being torn down, the invitation extended. Thank you that we no longer need to stand at a distance. Thank you that we can approach you with confidence because of Christ’s torn body. Help us to live in the reality of this access, to draw near to you not just today but every day. Amen.

In our last Midweek Meditation, Jonah's message to Nineveh sparked city-wide repentance, and God's mercy triumphed. We reflected on how our call to specific people and places deepens our call to God, shaping our faith through community. Now, in our final look at Jonah, we face his shocking response to Nineveh’s renewal—and the unsettling question at the heart of grace.

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.

Jonah 3:10-4:1

The Offence of Grace

After witnessing one of the greatest revivals in history—an entire city turning to God in repentance—Jonah is “displeased … exceedingly.” He is furious. These words should stop us in our tracks.

If renewal spread through our communities, if our entire region turned to God, wouldn’t we celebrate? Wouldn’t the confetti fly and the party begin?

Not for Jonah.

To say Jonah is angry is an understatement. His anger is referenced four times in the last chapter of his book. Jonah is down right red in the face, chest beating, full grown man channeling five-year-old-temper-tantruming-energy angry.

What’s Jonah's problem? We don’t have to guess. Jonah explains:

And [Jonah] prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

Jonah 4:2-3

When Jonah prayed in the belly of the fish, his prayer lacked any sign of confession or repentance for running from God. He ended that prayer with a declaration: “Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

The problem for Jonah is that God is the type who answers prayers. That prayer has now been answered in Nineveh. Salvation is the Lord’s—and God in his sovereignty and freedom brings it to Nineveh. But Jonah can’t handle it. He melts down. This was the opposite of what he wanted.

If you weren’t convinced that his first prayer was half-hearted at best, this second prayer confirms that he was just saying the right words before. He didn’t mean them. In fact, Jonah would rather go back to the belly of the fish—back to Sheol—than live with Nineveh’s renewal.

Essentially, Jonah says his deliverance from death was a mistake.

For the first time in his book, Jonah is explicit about his motivations. He fled from God’s calling because of who God is. He says, “That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” These aren’t usually the qualities that cause people to flee from God!

Even more, any ancient Jewish reader/listener would immediately notice that Jonah quotes from Exodus 34—when God revealed his character to Moses. But Jonah conspicuously omits the part that says “God keeps lovingkindness for thousands of generations, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin.”

Jonah is clear: he ran from God’s calling because he knew who God is. But Jonah still can’t bring himself to accept who God is. He can’t stomach the fact that God’s grace includes forgiving Nineveh’s brokenness and sin. Jonah can’t even say the words.

Jonah doesn't want to live with grace—at least not when it's extended to Nineveh. He doesn't want grace to include forgiveness of the inexcusable. Because to Jonah, Nineveh is inexcusable: evil, corrupt, violent, oppressive, bloodthirsty, and, don't forget, Gentile. So Jonah declares, "Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live."

Before we climb onto our moral high horses, let's try to empathize with Jonah. Grace isn't an easy thing to accept.

Consider Javert from Les Misérables.

This fanatic police officer dedicates his life to tracking down Jean Valjean. Javert is a man of the law, of rules, of justice. His commitment is to mercilessly upholding the law. As he sings, “And so it must be for so it is written on the doorway to paradise that those who falter and those who fall must pay the price!”

The turning point comes when Jean Valjean has the opportunity to kill Javert but instead releases him. This act of mercy rattles Javert to his core:

Why would his enemy show him mercy when he had been so merciless?

The next time Javert encounters Valjean, he walks away instead of arresting him. But Javert cannot live with his decision. He cannot reconcile the law with the mercy he shows to Valjean. So he dies by suicide.

His final words are gut-wrenching:

Who is this man? What sort of devil is he to have me caught in a trap and choose to let me go free? Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life! Damned if I'll live in the debt of a thief... There is nothing on earth that we share. It is either Valjean or Javert!

This is the epitome of a person who cannot live with grace.

If you’re still thinking, “I’m not like Jonah or Javert—their reactions to grace are too extreme,” let me ask you this: What about Nazi Germany? What if God forgave all the willing participants in the Reich? What about those who perpetrated apartheid? What if God forgave all the oppressors? What about terrorist groups that kidnap children? What if any of these groups, in their entirety, repented and God forgave them?

Many of us respond like we do when serial killers have jailhouse conversions. We question the authenticity of their repentance. We do anything we can to find a way to say they remain inexcusable before God.

That is what is so offensive about grace:

It’s all about the inexcusable being forgiven.

And when people or groups that we think are unforgivable are forgiven? We often respond like Jonah:

“I don’t want to be in a heaven where those people will be with me.”

In our own words, we’ll sing:

“It is either Valjean or Javert!”

What if Grace Is Withdrawn?

Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.

But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Jonah 4:3-4

God asks Jonah a pointed question:

Do you do well to be angry?

But Jonah doesn’t respond. He chooses silence. He unravels further, going backward to where he started, refusing to speak to God.

Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city.

Jonah 4:5

Jonah heads east.

In Scripture, going “east” can symbolize running away from God—like Cain going “east of Eden” (Genesis 3:24, 4:16). John Steinbeck was captivated by this eastward movement in his novel East of Eden. His characters wrestle with the matter of choice—symbolized by the central reflection over the Hebrew word “timshel” which can be translated as “Thou mayest” (Genesis 4:6-7). Sin crouches at the door. It’s desire is to master us. There is a choice between anger and acceptance. Much like Cain, Jonah chooses anger.

East of Nineveh is an arid desert. There, Jonah crafts a makeshift shelter, physically and spiritually positioning himself in opposition to God’s mercy. There, he waits to see what will become of the city. Essentially, Jonah questions the authenticity of Nineveh’s repentance. Like Steinbeck’s characters who struggle with believing in redemption, Jonah thinks, “It can’t be real. It won’t last. And when it doesn’t, God will bring judgment.”

God’s response is surprising and gracious:

Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.

Jonah 4:6

Just as God appointed a storm when Jonah was on the ship, a fish to save Jonah from death, and the fish to vomit Jonah onto shore, God now appoints a plant to grow. God sees Jonah’s discomfort and vulnerability to the sun. He sees that Jonah’s makeshift booth isn’t adequate. So God grows a plant to provide shade.

And Jonah is “exceedingly glad because of the plant.”

His emotions swing. From exceedingly angry to exceedingly glad. Of course, this gladness is the response Jonah should have had toward Nineveh. In his rebellion against God, however, Jonah was equally glad about a little more shade for his head as he was enraged by God’s grace toward Nineveh.

It makes me wonder: Why would God increase Jonah’s happiness, especially since Jonah is running again?

Well, God is up to something.

The Hebrew word translated as “discomfort” in verse 6 is Ra, which means “evil.” This is the same word used to describe Nineveh’s evil. It can legitimately be translated, God “saved Jonah from his evil.” In appointing the plant, God is still teaching Jonah about salvation! God is providing for Jonah, even in his rebellion. God is showing grace toward Jonah’s unrepentant evil—because that is who God is.

The plant is a vivid picture of God’s grace toward Jonah.

And under the plant, Jonah finally cracks a smile.

But just as Jonah begins to enjoy this grace, God removes it:

But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

Jonah 4:7-8

God appoints a worm to take away Jonah’s shade. But God is really removing his grace. God gives Jonah over to the cost of his rebellion and running. Jonah is exposed to the elements. Under the sun, in mere hours, his skin will burn and blister. Jonah will thirst and ache. God even intensifies the heat with a “scorching east wind.”

God puts Jonah in the pressure cooker.

Jonah is now exposed to a graceless existence—the very thing he wished upon Nineveh.

And without grace, Jonah will die.

What does Jonah say?

“It is better for me to die than to live.”

So God asks:

Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And Jonah said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”

Jonah 4:9

Here’s the predicament: Jonah doesn’t want to live with grace. But he doesn’t want to live without grace either.

If living with grace means Nineveh gets grace too—then Jonah wants death. So God gives Jonah an alternative reality. God gives him what Jonah wished upon Nineveh: a graceless existence.

But if Jonah has to live without grace, then he wants death as well, because the reality is unbearable.

Jonah can see no other option than death. And without grace, there is no other option. Because grace is the balm for death. And so, Jonah’s anger reemerges. His desire for death returns. He simply can’t accept grace.

The Struggle of Grace

Why can’t Jonah accept grace? For the same reason we often can’t: we don't think we really need it.

We’re mostly satisfied to say, “I need forgiveness; I’m not perfect. God can forgive me; because I’m earnest.”

But if we get upset when God starts forgiving those who have hurt us the most—the parents who failed us, the spouses who betrayed us, the people who took advantage of us, those who abused us and took pieces of our souls that cannot be returned—if we get upset when God forgives people far worse than us, it exposes something about ourselves:

We’re happy to admit we need forgiveness, but we don’t think we need it desperately. We think we’re pretty good. We think we somehow deserve to be forgiven because we’re not that bad. We’re just sort of bad. We don’t need grace; we need a little boost.

If we don’t see that the inexcusable in others is just as present in ourselves, then we don’t really see ourselves as God sees us. If God forgives you, it’s not because you deserve it. Or because you’re “pretty good” and just made some mistakes. It’s only because God chooses to lavish you with grace. God doesn’t have to forgive you. But you desperately need God to do so. Because any sin in your life makes you inexcusable in God’s sight. And without grace, like Jonah, we are exposed and helpless, heading toward death and a permanent separation from God that we deserve.

The Test of Grace in Our Lives

Grace changes us. As C.S. Lewis simply put it:

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

Like Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, we begin to extend grace to the inexcusable in others because we have received it and it has changed us. We desire others to know just how great grace is. This is what transformed Valjean from a hardened criminal into a gracious man.

After 19 years in prison, Valjean finds refuge under a bishop’s care. The bishop feeds him and gives him a bed for the evening. During the night, Valjean steals the bishop’s silverware and flees, only to be caught and brought back. In all likelihood, Valjean is on his way back to prison.

But the bishop surprises everyone.

In front of the police, he rebukes Valjean—not for theft, but for forgetting to also take the silver candlesticks, which were also a gift to him. In this moment, Valjean experiences grace. And it changes him forever.

If we can’t rejoice in extending grace to others, it’s because we haven’t really been transformed by grace. Grace remains just an idea, not an experience. And if grace remains an idea, it’ll always be a backward idea. Because grace isn’t fair. That’s what makes it grace. Until we realize there are inexcusable realities within our own souls that need God’s forgiveness, we will never rejoice when the inexcusable in others is forgiven too.

The Crying God of Grace

God concludes with a powerful question for Jonah:

And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

Jonah 4:10-11

God says to Jonah, “You pity the plant. But you did nothing to gain it. It was a gift. It was my work. And now when you've lost it, you are furious. You're weeping over it.”

“In the same way,” God asks, “shouldn’t I pity Nineveh?”

It’s a great city, far more significant than a little plant. All its residents don’t know their right from their left—they are morally confused and lost. And let’s not forget, “it has much cattle.” They matter too! This seemingly left-field note reminds us that throughout Jonah’s book, we’ve seen that God is Lord over all creation: the wind, the sea, the dry land, the fish, the plant, the worm—and yes, the cattle. Let’s not forget that God is as Lord over Nineveh—and even Jonah. Everything matters to God. God is concerned about restoring all of his creation to himself.

Because of this desire, God takes pity on Nineveh.

The Hebrew word for “pity” literally means “to have tears in one’s eyes.” When God sees Nineveh’s brokenness, their moral confusion, their violence, their evil—it brings him to tears—that is the God we worship!

This isn’t the only time God has wept over a city. Luke writes that when Jesus drew near and saw Jerusalem, “he wept over it” (Luke 19:41). He wept over its brokenness. Jesus wept over how it had abandoned God.

But now the great city of Nineveh has responded to grace. It’s cause for rejoicing. A party erupts in heaven. And God asks Jonah: Can’t you weep with me over brokenness? Can’t you rejoice with me when that renewal comes? Can’t you celebrate grace like you did under the plant?

Then the book ends.

But what about Jonah?

Did he ever repent?

Did he ever accept grace?

The only indication that Jonah repents is the book itself—a brutally honest book. Jonah retells his story. It’s his felix culpa—the story of his fortunate fall into grace. Jonah talks about running from God, going down even to Sheol. He talks about how he wanted death over life with God. He tells the mess that is his story—full of shortcomings and brokenness. He doesn’t gloss it up. And in doing so, Jonah amplifies God’s grace:

The profound grace that met Jonah in the depths of human depravity.

The grace didn’t give up on him.

The grace that pursued and chased him.

The grace that finally changed him.

By writing his book, Jonah models something very important for us:

Grace gives us the freedom to talk about our ugliness, our mistakes, our utter failures because we know that God has met us in those places. God has forgiven us in those places. God has extended grace to us in those places.

We share our stories of experiencing grace with others because it’s stories of grace that make grace concrete. People don’t need abstract ideas about grace; they need stories of how grace met you and changed you. And part of how we join God in the renewal of our communities is by bringing our stories of grace to them.

So where are you in Jonah’ story?

Are you running from extending grace?

Are you angry that God forgives those you can’t?

Or have you been so transformed by grace that you’re ready to share your own story of how God’s inexplicable grace found you?

In our previous Midweek Meditation, we journeyed with Jonah into the belly of the great fish—his rock-bottom moment where he finally turned to God in prayer. Though his prayer lacked confession and remained self-centred, God responded. The fish vomited Jonah onto dry land, giving the stubborn prophet another chance. We discovered that even our most imperfect prayers create enough of an opening for God to work with. Now, as Jonah heeds to the call to Nineveh, we see what happens when reluctant obedience meets God’s extravagant mercy.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.

Jonah 3:1-3a

Searching for God’s Calling

The book of Jonah begins a second time—well, in a sense.

Chapter 1 started with Jonah’s calling. Here in Chapter 3, he is called again. Before we dig deeper, let’s confront something many of us struggle with:

The very concept of “calling.”

When Christians talk about calling, it can carry baggage. It can become a pressure-filled notion breeds confusion, worry, and fear. What if I miss the call? What if I do the wrong thing?

Perhaps you’ve felt similar things. If God is calling … many of us are still waiting for the phone to ring. The frustration and discouragement of lacking a clear sense of what God wants for you whilst God even seems silent on the matter. Perhaps you feel little sense of calling in the work you’re currently doing—it feels mundane and meaningless. You might think to yourself: If you could just know your calling, then you’d have more purpose and fulfillment.

The book of Jonah reminds us that our primary calling is always to God himself. He has called us to himself. This call starts with Jesus who says:

“Follow me.”

Walking in his direction leads to Christlikeness.

Our call is to follow Jesus and become like him.

Even when God calls us to a specific task or profession, it’s always an expression and extension of who God is. God calling Jonah to go to Nineveh is an expression of God’s passion for the nations, his passion for cities, his passion for the world to be restored to himself.

The Divine Do-Over: No Plan B or Z Required

Sometimes God’s calling is explicit. Sometimes, it isn’t. But when God seems silent on the matter of “What should I do with my life?” what if we don’t automatically interpret it as negative? It might be permission: God giving us freedom to decide. In this freedom, God might be asking a liberating question: “What do you want to do? Based on what you know of me, and what you know of yourself, what do you want to do in this world?”

No matter what we do, we do it in light of our primary calling to follow God into Christlikeness as we walk in his ways. Paul puts it better, “Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

God doesn’t want us to have a ceaseless existential crisis trying to discern our personal callings. They may take many different expressions throughout our lives. We may do something for a season, then move on to another thing. We may even get it wrong at times. Like Jonah, we may run from the calling God does have for us, but …

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time.

The calling isn’t off the table even though Jonah ran from it—even though he attempted to head 2,500 miles in the opposite direction, even though his repentance remains partial-at-best.

More importantly, there isn’t a single word from God about everything that’s gone down. He doesn't heap shame upon Jonah for fleeing. He doesn’t recount all his mistakes. God simply offers the call—the same call—a second time.

God invites us to follow him, to do what he asks, again and again.

Here’s some relief: You don’t have to worry about missing your call or settling for plan B or C or D or Z.

Jonah is offered God’s “Plan A” a second time. Do you think Jonah’s flight took God by surprise? Of course not. Our confusion, our indecision, even our blatant running from God doesn’t thwart God’s plans. In fact, God can and does use these things to prime us for growth in our calling to him. Everything that Jonah has gone through has prepared him to walk toward God’s calling. This is not an affirmation of his (or our) disobedience, but rather the glory of how God can redeem.

God calls Jonah again.

But God doesn’t soften the call either.

It’s still just as challenging as the first time:

Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.

Jonah 3:2

In this, we see that calling involves risk and dependency.

Nineveh is a risky place to go. The outcome isn’t certain. God doesn’t give Jonah the full picture. Jonah doesn’t even know what he will say to the people of Nineveh yet. Jonah gets one piece at a time.

Following God is an unfolding story. We don’t get all the details of how things will go. We simply get enough to be faithful in the present. You can’t know what it means to follow Jesus five years from now, a year from now, a month from now, even a week from now—let alone tomorrow. Indeed, Jesus himself said today has enough worries of it’s own, and his brother said it’s arrogant to boast about what we might accomplish tomorrow. God is free to ask of us what he wants. All we can do is be faithful to him today and respond to what we do know of his desires for us.

When Tiny Messages Move Mountains

To our surprise, Jonah concedes to the call. That’s not fair actually. Jonah finally obeys.

Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it.

Jonah 3:3

Jonah arrives to the great metropolis. Its sheer size is highlighted. The smallness of the prophet is contrasted with the city’s vastness.

For some people, it’s photos from the Hubble telescope that make them realize how small they are. For others, it’s standing in Times Square for the first time, looking up at the towering buildings and feeling tiny amid the crowds.

What is Jonah compared to Nineveh?

Nineveh was the zenith of cultural civilization in its day. It was also a brutal and violent city. What impact could little obscure Jonah possibly have?

Often—if not always—God calls us into situations and places beyond our own abilities so that we depend on him. Jonah lacked spiritual maturity and influence. But God called him to a place where he was weak, vulnerable, and exposed as needy—so that Jonah could know God’s strength and power.

Anything that happens in Nineveh isn’t going to be because of Jonah’s stature. He is small, the city is big, and God is bigger.

And just as Jonah pales in comparison to the city, his message is equally small—even paltry. It’s only five words in Hebrew:

And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

Jonah 3:4b

In terms of prophetic messages in Scripture, this is exceptionally brief.

Jonah’s message isn’t much, and it’s not that impressive. Can you imagine being in Jonah’s shoes? Walking around a huge urban centre, proclaiming such a brief message? What difference could it possibly make? What could God possibly do with it?

There’s nothing to suggest that Jonah is truncating God’s message. This is just the message he received. It’s not eloquent or verbose. It’s brief, but it is loaded.

Forty is an important number in Scripture.

Eugene Peterson puts it this way:

Forty days is a period for testing the reality of one’s life—examining it for truth, for authenticity. If the forty does its proper work, life begins in a new way. If the forty is ignored, life is destroyed.

Think about Noah’s forty days in the ark.

Israel’s forty years in the wilderness.

Elijah’s forty days on the run.

Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the wilderness.

The forty days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension …

Nineveh has forty days.

The question is: What will the outcome be? Will the forty days lead to life beginning in a new way or to life being destroyed?

On the surface, it sounds as if Jonah is saying, “Destruction is coming your way, Nineveh!” But that’s not exactly what he says. He says, “Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

The word for “overthrown” is ambiguous. Its basic meaning is “to turn.” In some contexts, it can mean “to overturn,” as it does when describing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Jonah’s preference for Nineveh). But the word can also mean "to turn around" or "transform" (God's preference for Nineveh). The word here is hardly accidental. In forty days, Nineveh has two options: they can be overturned by God or turned around by God.

When Nineveh Dropped to Its Knees

In Nineveh, the forty days does its proper work:

And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

Jonah 3:5-6

If we could sum up Nineveh’s response in one word, it would be:

Repentance.

And their repentance is thorough.

They believed God. From the greatest to the least, they turned. They put on sackcloth, the traditional garb of repentance. A decree is issued from the king. It is a city-wide turning. Even the animals participate!

And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands”

Jonah 3:7-8

The king commands everyone to turn from their evil and from the violence in their hands. This is a shocking message—especially considering Nineveh’s reputation. One scholar described them as the “Nazi stormtroopers of the ancient world.” The king calls out their social and cultural corruption. Their violence needs to cease. It’s an offence to God. They’re at risk of perishing.

This is a disproportionate response to the short message of a foreign, unknown prophet. It reminds us that when God calls us—he is always ahead of us.

As God’s people go, as they follow his call, they find him already waiting to meet them. God calls Jonah to go. But God was already preparing Nineveh for this moment. Jonah can’t take any credit. Nineveh’s response is a work of God. It’s not Jonah’s job to save Nineveh—that’s God’s job. But Jonah had a part to play—he had to speak, proclaim, and live out his calling.

Wherever and however God calls us to participate in his work of renewal, we are only joining him in what God is already doing in every place. God is already at work—in our classrooms, offices, homes, public spaces, restaurants, government institutions. Whatever our work may be, wherever we may go, God is already there.

Like Jonah, it’s not our job to save our country, city, town, or neighbourhood. That is God’s job. But God does have a part for each of us to play. Our job isn’t to bring God to anyone but to be faithful to what God is already doing for them and what God is asking of us.

The Nineveh Mirror

God brought city-wide renewal to Nineveh. Imagine it! Picture if this happened today: people repenting in the streets, a decree from the mayor declaring collective repentance, cows moo-ing to the glory of God. But this moment is even more awe-inspiring when we consider the context. Jonah learns that the people and place God calls us to play an important part in our primary calling to God.

Think about it: What has been lacking in Jonah’s life?

Repentance.

Remember, his prayer in the belly of the whale lacked any signs of confession or remorse for running away from God. He simply wanted out of bad circumstances.

What does Nineveh model to Jonah?

Repentance.

Ninevah make explicit what is lacking in Jonah’s own relationship with God: he still needs to repent. He still needs to confess. Wicked Nineveh can see their own evil—but Jonah still can’t see his own evil.

In the bigger picture, this matters all the more.

What was lacking in Israel during this time?

Repentance.

The nation was spiritually bankrupt. Their king was corrupt. They focused on nationalism—but had no spiritual vibrancy. They needed to return to God in repentance too.

But this goes both ways.

What’s still lacking in Nineveh? If you compare Nineveh’s response to the sailors on the boat, they show repentance but there is no mention of God’s personal name. There is no mention of making commitments to follow God. They still need the full picture of who God is. They still need to know whom to believe in.

Jonah needs his calling to Nineveh for his calling to God: they model what he lacks. Israel needs Nineveh for their calling to God: they need spiritual renewal and repentance. But Nineveh needs Israel. They need Israel to return to their primary calling. Because if Israel as a nation returns to God, they’ll also return to their purpose: to be a light and blessing to all nations and to make God known.

In retelling his story, Jonah see more clearly with hindsight. Now, Jonah pushes Israel to first return to their primary calling: they need to return to God. But if they’re truly spiritually renewed, their hearts will begin to beat for the nations around them, because God’s heart beats for the nations.

Jonah has learned that the people and place God calls us to play an important part in deepening our calling to God. And Jonah sees that his calling cannot be separated from a people and a place. Because God is a God of people and places.

Think about Jesus. He was called to proclaim the gospel, “Repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand.” His call brought him to people and places. He went to people like Peter, John, Matthew, Bartimaeus, Zacchaeus, Mary, Martha, and Jairus. He went to places like Galilee, Samaria, Caesarea, Jericho, and Jerusalem.

Jonah’s calling as a prophet started with Hebrews in Israel. It moved to Assyrians in Nineveh.

You’ll have your people and place too. Your people might be your coworkers, your place might be your office. Your people might be students, your place might be a school. Your people might be the sick, your place might be a hospital. Your people might be your family, your place might be your home.

The common thread is the way we all follow Jesus into the places and among the people in our lives. Your primary calling to follow Jesus isn’t ever put on pause. That calling goes with you into every place and to every person in your life.

Double Reflection: How Places Challenge and Complete Us

The shortcomings of our own places can reflect our own spiritual blind spots. As I’ve said, Nineveh’s capacity for repentance exposed Jonah’s reluctance to truly turn to God— just as the spiritual climate of our own place might reveal our hidden apathy or resistance.

While we might focus on the spiritual “deadness” of a place, we should also recognize its virtues. Many places demonstrate commitment to justice and compassion that can challenge our own priorities. Do we share the same passion for addressing homelessness, inequality, or environmental stewardship? Our calling to the gospel inherently includes a calling to seek justice—that is, to do what is right.

The shocking mercy God shows to Nineveh—a city known for its brutality—creates the central crisis of Jonah’s story. When God relents from the disaster he had threatened, we’re confronted with the radical extent of divine compassion.

This should challenge us to ask: Will we participate in God’s mercy? Will we exist not just for ourselves but for the people and places God has positioned us within?

Following the One Who Went Before Us

Our primary calling remains to follow Jesus—to hear his words “Follow me” and respond. This calling will inevitably lead us into broken, complex places where both challenge and beauty await. The question becomes not whether our places need transformation, but how we participate in God’s already-present work of renewal.

We can’t do it by our own strength.

Thankfully, Jesus himself was utterly faithful to his calling. He went to a place for a people—Golgotha for sinners. There he reconciled our profound brokenness with God’s immeasurable love.

In Christ, our small acts of faithfulness, like Jonah’s brief message, may seem insignificant against the scale of our challenges. Yet they are joined into the God who can “overturn” evil with love and accomplish far more than we can imagine.

In our previous midweek meditation, Jonah fled God’s call to Nineveh and jumped onboard a ship sailing toward Tarshish instead. His disobedience endangered everyone aboard during a violent storm. While pagan sailors prayed desperately, Jonah slept—eventually choosing to be thrown overboard rather than pray for these Gentiles. His narrow view of God as solely Israel’s deity blinded him to God’s purposes for all nations. Yet God’s plan prevailed—the sailors found faith despite Jonah’s rebellion. We now continue Jonah’s journey from below.

So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah 1:15-17

When God Won’t Let You Go

Jonah’s descent continues. He has gone down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into the inner part of the ship, and now down into the depths of the ocean itself. His flight from God has led him to the ultimate low point—quite literally. But even here, at what should be the end of his story, God intervenes.

Once again we encounter God’s sovereignty. Throughout Jonah, we’re repeatedly reminded that all of creation is the Lord’s. Jonah is never a step ahead of God: He flees—but the sea is the Lord’s, and God brings a storm. He chooses death in the waves—but God appoints a great fish to swallow him up. God’s reach extends even to the depths where we believe we’ve finally escaped him. The great fish becomes not Jonah’s end but a womb for rebirth.

Jonah cannot escape God’s sight and hand, not even in death. And as he will discover, even in Sheol (the place of the dead, also see Psalm 139:8): God is there.

In this bizarre circumstance, confined in the uncomfortable belly of a great fish, Jonah finally does what he should have done all along:

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish.

Jonah 2:1

Here we go!

When Jonah can descend no further, he turns to God. He prays. And interestingly, his prayer is the only thing highlighted during his stay in the belly of the fish. Not the smell. Not the squishiness. Not the undigested sea creatures. Not the darkness. The focus is entirely on what this crisis reveals about Jonah’s heart. What does the prophet have to say to God after this ordeal?

I called out to the Lord, out of my distress,
and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
For you cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
passed over me.

Jonah 2:2-3

His language is telling.

Jonah describes himself as being in “the belly of Sheol.” While he hasn’t literally died and gone to the place of the dead, the belly of the fish has become, for him, a living Sheol—a living death. From Jonah’s perspective, he is experiencing death—the waters have closed over him, the deep has surrounded him, he’s sunk to the roots of the mountains, and the bars have closed upon him forever.

It’s at this point of absolute rock bottom that Jonah finally prays. This is significant because sometimes when things can get no worse, our hearts can still harden further. Everything falls apart, and we dig in our heels, saying, “Still, I will not speak to God.” Or we blame God all the more.

But like Jonah, distress can also lead us to a breaking point where our only option is to turn to God. Sometimes—and it’s never easy when it happens—God intervenes in our lives by allowing things to fall apart. Nothing seems to work. And God permits this because it’s in the distress of our circumstances, even the consequences we deserve, that our hardened hearts allow the smallest crack. And through this crack, God’s light begins to shine in.

Revisionist History

As we examine Jonah’s prayer more closely, we discover something revealing about the human heart: we like to rewrite history. We gloss over the messy parts and make ourselves look better. Don’t believe me? Look at verse 3:

For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas.

Sorry, who cast Jonah into the deep?

God?

That’s not how I remember the story—how about you?

Jonah attributes (blames) God for sinking him the depths. God. Jonah is rewriting what happened. This is revisionist history. Nowhere on the boat did Jonah pray or seek direction from the Lord. He simply assumed death was his only option—and on some level he desired it—and instructed the sailors to throw him overboard.

It’s telling that Jonah didn’t jump ship himself. By instructing others to do it, he shifts blame to them, and ultimately to God. He interpreted the circumstances himself and decided what God must want. Now in prayer, he portrays himself as a victim—like a psalmist who suffers innocently at the hand of their enemies.

What’s glaringly absent from this eloquent, psalm-rooted prayer is any hint of confession. Jonah offers no recognition of his disobedience, no contrition, no apology, not even a halfhearted “sorry not sorry.” Jonah quotes selectively from Psalm 31 but ignores lines in that very psalm like “my strength fails because of my iniquity and my bones waste away.” In fact, he bypasses all the psalms of confession entirely.

To be fair, Jonah expresses some deep truths.

God does hear us when we call out.

God does answer us.

God can deliver us and bring our lives out of the pit.

Even from the depths of our failures and running, God still gives ear to our cries.

But from the focus of Jonah’s prayer, it seems he only turns to these truths in hope of escaping his circumstances. My point is this:

Jonah’s prayer is fundamentally self-centred.

This reminds us that often when we pray from distress, our prayers become myopic and self-focused. We may give very little thought to being with God and returning to God. Instead, our overriding concern is finding help and a way out. We bank on the truth that “God listens, he hears, he can help!” but our hope is merely to be delivered from our circumstances, not delivered into God’s presence.

That’s what's happening with Jonah.

Jonah just wants out of the belly of Sheol.

So—he prays.

Even worse, the idol Jonah constructed out of false ideas about God remains intact. He prays:

Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love

Jonah 2:8

Likely, in praying this, Jonah is thinking about his time on the boat. He still dismisses the sailors as pagans who worship “vain idols,” believing they’ve forsaken their opportunity to know God’s steadfast love. But this is another example of Jonah’s revisionist history. You may recall, it was the sailors who foreshook vain idols and turned to the steadfast love of God. Jonah is the one still paying regard to vain idols, clinging to a wrong understanding of God.

Jonah continues worshipping a “small-g” version of God that isn’t congruent with who God really is. In his prayer, where does God dwell? In verses 4 and 7, it’s “his holy temple.” While there’s truth to this, it’s clear Jonah still sees God as the God of Israel alone, not the God of the nations. He remains convinced God is only to be found in Jerusalem, in the temple—not on that ship, and definitely not in Nineveh.

So when Jonah declares, “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay,” his words ring hollow, just as they did on the ship. As we’ll see next week, when Jonah eventually follows through on his call, it’s pathetic, bare-minimum obedience. His “fear” of the Lord remains questionable at best.

The crux of Jonah's prayer comes in his closing words:

Salvation belongs to the Lord!

Jonah 2:9

Really, Jonah?

Are you prepared for what this means? What if salvation has already come to the sailors on the ship? What if salvation is on its way to Nineveh?

Often when we pray, we don’t realize what we’re really asking for. As Morgan Freeman’s God character says in the movie Evan Almighty: “If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If they pray for courage, does God give them courage? Or does he give them opportunities to be courageous?”

In the same way, you shouldn’t think you can pray “Salvation belongs to the Lord!” while holding onto your false idols. Deep down, Jonah still thinks “Salvation belongs to Israel.” As the book will show us, Jonah is not okay with salvation being shared with Nineveh.

But the twist is that Jonah has inadvertently invited God to deconstruct his idol. He has invited God to teach him the depth and breadth of salvation, and what God’s vision for salvation looks like for the whole world—even the enemies of Israel. If we pray “Salvation belongs to the Lord,” we shouldn't be surprised if the answer looks radically different than we're comfortable with.

… And God Answer a Prayer Like This?

When we look beneath the surface of Jonah’s prayer, we see it’s a mess. He rewrites history. He has a distorted view of events. He blames God for his distress. He doesn’t acknowledge his sin. He still clings to his idol.

Nevertheless, for all his faults, he prays.

And this prayer is the structural centre of Jonah's book.

As Jonah reflects on his story and retells it to us, he sees this broken, confused, messy, self-centred prayer as a turning point. A defining moment. Jonah wants us to see that prayer is the start of renewal. And he wants us to know that God answered this prayer.

Why?

Why would God listen to a prayer like this?

One scholar, Dr. Holbert, says the fish was so disgusted by Jonah’s hypocritical prayer that “It is no wonder that immediately after Jonah shouts, 'Deliverance belongs to Yahweh!' the big fish throws up.” I can’t help but smirk. Yet the passage attributes the hurling not to the fish’s volition but to God:

“And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land”

Jonah 2:10

God still hears Jonah.

God still responds.

God still answers Jonah's prayer to be delivered from the belly of Sheol. We can almost hear God saying, “Alright, spit him out. I can work with him. Faults and all.”

This is good news for us all, isn’t it?

Three Days That Point to Salvation

The answer to why God would listen to such a weak prayer has everything to do with how long Jonah was in the belly of the fish:

Three days and three nights

Jonah 1:17

This rare phrase in Scripture was highlighted by Jesus himself:

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Matthew 12:40

Jesus descended to Sheol—the place of the dead. The point is that in leaving heaven and glory, Jesus’ descent knew no bounds. He came down and became man. He went deep down and became a servant. He knew death, and he even descended into Sheol. Whatever he did there, we can't know for certain. But here's what we do know:

Jonah tried as hard as he could to descend from God, but he could not outrun God's grace and presence. God was unwilling to let Sheol become a fixed location for Jonah. Jonah was millimetres from crossing a line from which he could never return. He went to Sheol to escape God. But in choosing death over life, he discovered God is willing to descend into the darkest places to rescue us.

Why?

Because Jesus went to Sheol—he descended as deep as one can go—so that Jonah didn’t have to.

The Crack That Lets Light In

By any measure, Jonah is exactly where he should be. He’s dug his own grave and prays possibly one of the most narcissistic prayers in Scripture. Yet Jonah, in writing his book, sees that this broken prayer is what connected him to God’s salvation.

Prayer made the difference between remaining in Sheol forever and being saved.

Jonah reminds us:

God doesn’t save the worthy—he saves the unworthy. He saves people who have dug their own graves, who have run as far away from him as possible, who deserve death. You cannot out-sin God’s grace or descend too far from his reach. On this side of eternity, there is always the opportunity to turn to him.

God isn’t looking for perfect prayers. He’s looking for the slightest crack in us to let the light of his presence in. As flawed as Jonah is, there is a crack—an ounce of openness amid his rampant imperfections. That’s all God needs to work with.

This is why Jonah presents prayer as the turning point in his book.

It wasn’t pretty.

He was still a mess.

There’s still more work to be done in his life.

But God responded and transformed the belly of the fish from a grave into a womb. In hindsight, Jonah sees how God took his self-focused prayer and answered it in ways he could never have imagined—new life burst forth from it.

Before Jonah could find his way to Nineveh, he had to find his way back to God. He had to remember the Lord. He had to pray. And we must do the same. Like Jonah, we’ll discover that our brokenness doesn’t stop God from calling us and using us for his purposes before we have our lives all sorted out.

In our previous Midweek Meditation on Jonah, we witnessed the “faithful” prophet’s flight from God’s call. When commanded to go to Nineveh, Jonah flees from God’s call and heads 2,500 miles in the opposite direction to Tarshish. There, Jonah boards a ship, and attempts to escape. But while Jonah can flee and dig deeper into his disobedience, he cannot escape God.

When Sailors Pray and Prophets Sleep

Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.

Jonah 1:3-5

Jonah wants to escape from the presence/face of the Lord. But God put Jonah’s flight to a halt with a great storm upon the sea—a tempest, a violent windstorm so severe that the very ship was in danger of breaking to pieces.

The focus of the story shifts. Jonah recedes to the background while the sailors take centre stage. It’s an interesting narrative strategy—on this boat, we learn more from Gentile sailors than we do from a Jewish prophet of the true God. (It’s a little bit of foreshadowing—Ninevah’s encounter of God might have a thing or two to teach Israel about God).

If you’ve ever watched the reality show Deadliest Catch, you can better imagine this scene. Professional sailors and fishermen are strong, burly men who work within storms as a profession. They respect the power of ocean and wind. So when we read that these sailors “were afraid and crying out to their gods,” you know the situation is dire. This is no ordinary storm—it’s a terrifying situation that shakes even the strongest, most seasoned men to their bones.

This is unmistakably life or death.

The sailors take action. They each cry out to their gods. In the ancient world, a pantheon of deities oversaw specific areas of the world. This ship carries a variety of cultures—different people worshipping different gods. They pray to cover their bases, hoping one of their gods might be awake, pay attention, and calm the storm. When they see no answer, they get practical:

They hurl cargo off the ship—a painful decision that would cost them economically. But they value living over financial loss and take drastic measures to save their lives.

These men are frantic. They’re panicking. They’re praying. They’re throwing cargo overboard. They’re fighting against the storm. They’re fighting to live.

But what about Jonah?

But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep.

Jonah 1:5

This is stupefying sleep!

The ship is rocking, reeling, groaning, and literally falling apart. People are running around panicked, throwing things overboard, shouting prayers into the face of the storm to their gods—and Jonah is fast asleep. He knows neither the danger he has put others in nor his own peril. Jonah doesn’t seem the least bit troubled by his disobedience. He sleeps deeply. What?! How?!

The Hell of Disobedience

When we deliberately and actively refuse to do what God calls us to do, we should expect disorder. A mentor of mine, Dr. Tuttle, calls this “The hell of disobedience.” When we run from God, we should expect storms—whether in external circumstances like Jonah or in inner turmoil.

While not every form of struggle and disorder in our lives stems from disobedience, some certainly do. When we say a resounding “no” to God, we’re refusing the Author of life, the one who brings order to the world. We’re running into disorder, chaos, and life apart from the Creator of all things. And while God will let us run, in his goodness he will not let the path be smooth.

The sailors fight for their lives while God’s prophet slumbers. Jonah is oblivious to the danger of his disobedience. Hypersomnia—sleeping when we shouldn’t—is actually a sign of passivity, depression, apathy, and giving up on life. Jonah’s sleeping might seem confusing—but it indicates disorder in his life because of disobedience.

When you’ve run so far from God that you don't even care anymore, when you sleep through storms:

You are truly in danger.

Unlikely Voices

The captain came and said to Jonah, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish”

Jonah 1:6

Have you ever been in a conversation where something someone said stuck with you? And then later that day or week, someone else says the exact same thing to you? It’s not just coincidence—the words sink in as God mysteriously guides and speaks to you.

The right words at the right time.

That’s what happens here.

The captain uses the same words to address Jonah as God used earlier: “Arise …” Jonah surely heard the voice of God echoing through this captain.

When we refuse to listen to God, he continues to speak—through disorder in our lives and through the mouths of people around us—even those who don’t know him. The irony is that a Gentile captain is exhorting a prophet to pray. The prophet should be praying—but Jonah remains silent. The sailors have exhausted their list of known gods, and Jonah won't say a word to the one true God who can save them all from perishing.

The sailors may have been driven by fear and panic. We know their gods were merely wooden statues, but their actions were correct. They recognized their dependence on something greater than themselves, but they didn’t know the one true God’s name—unlike Jonah.

Jonah knew the one true, living God. His belief was well-founded. But his beliefs and his actions were uncoordinated. He refuses to acknowledge God even in the face of the storm, even in this life-or-death situation. But in response to Jonah’s stubborn silence and refusal to act, the sailors persist. Their determination to find life in the face of death won't be thwarted.

And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?'“

Jonah 1:7-8

The sailors had never seen a storm like this. That a God would act this way astonishes them. They can’t comprehend it all. So they ask Jonah, “Explain yourself! Help us understand! Who are you?”

Finally, Jonah speaks. And his answer is key to understanding this entire passage:

“I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land”

Jonah 1:9

At first, it seems Jonah is finally testifying about God. Yes! He’s finally living up to his call as God's prophet! But note what he doesn't say. The sailors ask, “What is your occupation?” Jonah doesn't answer. He hides that he’s a prophet. But he’s more than happy to tell them who he is:

“I am a Hebrew.”

You can almost hear him puffing up his chest and his nationalistic hairs standing on end. Since Jonah identifies himself first ethnically—”I am a Hebrew!”—and only then religiously, it’s fair to say his ethnicity primarily defines him. This is why he fled his call. He’s a Hebrew from Israel who serves the God of Israel. What business does a prophet of Israel have going to the nations, to cities like Nineveh?

When Our God Becomes Too Small

Jonah says “I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” How he identifies God matters. He’s the God of the universe who made all things—and most notably for the moment at hand: the sea.

The sailors would hear:

“My God is responsible for this storm.”

But given all that Jonah has done and hasn’t done—fleeing and remaining silent and prayerless—his words ring hollow.

Jonah doesn’t truly fear the Lord. “Fearing the Lord” describes someone who honors their relationship with God, who says, “I will go wherever the Lord asks. I will do whatever the Lord asks. I will say ‘yes’ before I even know the question.” It’s someone who knows their place in relationship with God, who genuinely fears God because he’s God and can do whatever he wants and ask whatever he wants.

That hardly describes Jonah.

Jonah pays lip service to “fearing” God, but doesn’t actually fear him. He has redefined and shrunk God down. Jonah has his own little idea of god. But the true living God doesn’t match what Jonah has constructed. Jonah has made an idol—a small “g” god he exalts and worships as if it’s truly God.

Tim Keller helpfully defines an idol:

An idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.

Patrick Miller uncovers an additional, uncomfortable layer to this understanding of idolatry:

Idolatry is not merely loving something more than God. It’s enjoying something independently of God. It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re free of the former, while indulging in the latter.

While idols can be anything—possessions, careers, relationships—they can also be ideas. Ideas are often the more insidious idols because they're less obvious.

Jonah’s idol is constructed of ideas. He believes God is a Hebrew-only loving god, a Gentile-excluding god, the god of a very specific people for a very specific and narrow cause: making Israel boom and grow. Jonah’s idol is particularly insidious because it’s woven with half-truths.

One of the most telling signs of idolatry is what happens when that idol is confronted.

Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they called out to the Lord, “O Lord, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

Jonah 1:11-16

The storm intensifies. Twice we’re told it grows more and more tempestuous—violent and chaotic. Jonah says, “Throw me into the sea. That’s what’s required. This storm is my fault.” The sailors try desperately to avoid this solution. But ultimately, they pray to God and then do as Jonah instructed.

It might seem like Jonah is being selfless, willing to die to save the sailors.

But that’s not the case at all.

In this life-or-death situation, Jonah chooses death rather than life with the sailors. We know this because he still hasn’t done the one thing they asked him to do:

Jonah still hasn’t prayed.

Even facing death, Jonah hasn’t stopped running from God. He has just changed the destination. If Jonah can’t escape to Tarshish, he’ll go to Sheol—the place of the dead. He’ll take a watery grave before praying for Gentile sailors—let alone praying with them to God. Do you see this nationalism getting in the way?

Jonah would rather die with his small idea of god—his idol intact—than adjust his understanding to accommodate the inclusion of other people as the true living God desires. He had a pick-and-choose, little “g” god. He focused on parts of Scripture that highlighted God’s love for Israel but ignored the parts that express God’s desire to see all nations become part of his people.

Ultimately, Jonah preferred death over living with a fuller picture of who God really is. That’s how we know he was worshipping an idol. When the idol is confronted: Jonah effectively says, “I would rather die than give up my Hebrew-only, Gentile-excluding, Israel-booming god.”

Know Thy Idols

This is the problem with idolatrous ideas about God. We would rather hold onto them, even to our own demise, than give them up. So how do we discover if we’ve shrunk God down and are worshipping a false idea of him?

Like Jonah, we should ask:

What’s your Nineveh?

Who would be the hardest person for you to reach?

The homeless, sex workers, people battling addiction, teenagers, the elderly, the sick and dying, the imprisoned, the poor, the wealthy, people who have different sexuality or gender identities, people of different ethnicities, immigrants, politicians, liberals, conservatives, nationalists?

Who makes it easy for you to believe God shouldn’t want to reach them?

If someone has come to mind—let alone an entire group of people—then you might be worshipping an idea of God rather than God himself. You’ll risk making a god who is only the god of people you’re comfortable with: people who look like you, act like you, see things like you.

Perhaps you’re a people person. You truly love the idea of God reaching every person. If so, it’s still important to examine your view of God:

Is it easier to believe God is so nice he wouldn’t want to offend someone by calling out their sin? Is God so inclusive he would never set boundaries on how people should live? Is God so easygoing he doesn’t really care what you do with your time, money, body, or life? Is God not really a person but a cosmic presence? Is it easier to believe God doesn’t use eternal destruction that there is no judgment?

Is there any part of God as revealed in Scripture that you try to reduce or remove rather than holistically incorporate into your understanding?

These are aspects we soften or limit about God. We might not realize it, but often we believe they don’t reflect who he truly is. If you do any of this, you’re constructing a nicer, smaller, more palatable idol. And like Jonah, it’s usually so you don’t have to follow God’s radical calling on your life.

The problem is when we limit our view of God, we limit our view of ourselves and others. We shrink God to be a little “g” god and without realizing it, we lose parts of ourselves too.

Jonah sees himself as a prophet of Israel alone. Therefore, God must be the God of Israel alone. As a result, Jonah sees himself as chosen, better, above other nations and peoples. But this actually limits his vision. He doesn’t see clearly. He thinks of himself more highly than he should, and his idol leads him to believe others are less than him.

God is supposed to define Jonah and his place in the world and how he sees other people. Jonah wants the smaller picture—and it’s a tragedy bcause he has the opportunity to be part of something bigger and greater. His idol, which he thinks is better, only limits his understanding of God; what God can do, and who God cares about.

What Jonah fails to see is that Israel is no different than Nineveh. He as a Hebrew is no different than a Ninevite. Jonah is upset at God for sending him to evil Nineveh, that terrible city that has inflicted so much pain on others. But Jonah doesn’t see that his nation’s evil and own evil are just as bad. Let’s remember: Jonah serves under King Jeroboam II’s reign—a king who “did what is evil in the sight of the Lord.” And Jonah’s disobedience has brought this storm and suffering upon the sailors. Jonah can’t see that all nations and people, including Israel and himself, stand in need of God’s grace and mercy. The evil in Nineveh needs God’s intervention: so does Israel, so does this storm, so does Jonah.

Jonah has become so blind that he can't even see others earnestly seeking after God. All he sees is a category of people: “Gentiles.” All he sees is their false gods. And he overlooks their earnest actions, their prayers, their desire to find the true God—their desire for life in the face of death.

Love Your Neighbour + Enemy

In our communities, like these sailors, people are actively fighting against a culture of death. Their beliefs may be misguided, but their actions are correct. Can we join with people in seeking the common good? Can we pray for them, and maybe even with them? Can we meet them in their desire for life and goodness and point them toward what they may not even realize they’re searching for? Or will we remain prayerless like Jonah? Will we remain closed off to what God wants to do in and through us? Will we remain blind to communities full of people searching for life amidst death?

Jonah couldn’t do it. He couldn't see the opportunity for God's salvation to come in a profound way on this ship. He settled for being tossed into the sea, into the waves, into death rather than giving up his idol. But there is something beautiful and relieving in this passage:

God’s hands are not tied by our disobedience.

Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows

Jonah 1:16

These men start by praying to any and every god. They throw cargo overboard. They cast lots. They do whatever they can to find life. And they’re afraid. We see them grow “exceedingly afraid” when they learn Jonah is responsible for the storm. Death seems inevitable. But the scene ends with their fear properly directed. They “feared the Lord exceedingly.”

Jonah “fears” the Lord but only in lip-service. These men experience genuine conversion to God. They pray to him. They make sacrifices and vows. They give their lives to the one true, living God.

And Jonah, God's prophet, had nothing to do with it. He can take no credit. He would rather jump ship than participate in their salvation. Yet, God in his grace uses Jonah’s disobedience even for others’ salvation. This also foreshadows what God will do in Nineveh. God’s grace and mercy can overcome even the deepest evil.

This is the gospel in this text—the beautiful, relieving truth:

God’s hands are not tied by our disobedience.

Why not?

Because Jesus is obedient where we are not. While Jonah chose death rather than obedience—preferring to be thrown into the sea than pray for Gentiles on the ship—Jesus chose death as the ultimate act of obedience. Jonah’s “sacrifice” was actually just another form of running away, a final refusal to embrace God’s mission to those he deemed unworthy. But Jesus willingly threw himself into the storm of God’s wrath and judgment—the storm our evil created—laying down his life on the cross so that all might be saved.

Only Jesus was able to calm the storm for the sailors on Jonah’s ship. And even now, as we face storms and struggles, as we face our own disobedience to God’s call, Jesus shows up. He doesn’t sleep through our peril. He wakes up and calms the storm for us. He saves us over and over again. He knows we will fail. Even so, he chooses us—Gentiles, sailors, Hebrews, prophets, scared disciples in a boat—he chooses to save us through his perfect obedience, even unto death.

If we truly want to answer the call to love both our neighbours and enemies, we must first confront our own Jonah-like tendencies. Like him, we often flee from God’s inconvenient mission, seeking our comfortable Tarshish rather than challenging Nineveh. To overcome this, we must look directly at God's true face—revealed perfectly in Jesus. Not a deity of our selective imagination who demands only partial obedience, but the God who consistently turns toward the broken world, including our enemies.

In Jesus, God’s full nature dwelled among us, showing a love that extends beyond comfortable boundaries. Only when we stop running from what we see in his face—that he is a God of mission to all people—can we learn to love others with the same transformative love he has shown us.

The question remains:

Will we continue constructing our smaller gods that ask nothing uncomfortable of us, or will we rise and go where he sends us?

Welcome to Midweek Meditations—an experiment here at Ordinary Matters. I enjoy the immense richness of dwelling in biblical texts—letting them question me more than I question them. This series on Jonah is my first attempt to bring this practice into this space. If it resonates, it may become a regular offering alongside our more thematic explorations. I’d love to hear your thoughts along the way—so please leave a comment!

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord”

Jonah 1:1-3

The Reluctant Prophet

Who is Jonah the son of Amittai?

We find him mentioned in one other place in Scripture: 2 Kings 14:25.

This historical reference provides some crucial background: “Jeroboam restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.”

From this, we learn that Jonah lived during the first half of the 8th century BCE. His father was Amittai (ironically meaning “faithfulness”), and he was from Gath-hepher. Most significantly, he did his prophetic work under King Jeroboam II's reign—a king who “did what is evil in the sight of the Lord.”

This is our first clue that something is off.

Jonah worked alongside a corrupt king, prophesying in support of expanding Israel’s borders. He was essentially a nationalist prophet, concerned with building up Israel politically and geographically. Meanwhile, his contemporaries—Amos and Hosea—were prophesying against King Jeroboam and Israel, calling out their moral and spiritual bankruptcy.

Two very different prophetic imaginations emerge: Jonah focused on boundaries and nationalism versus Amos and Hosea concerned with spiritual renewal and faithfulness.

Anyone reading this in its historical context who was faithful to God would have been shocked: “The word of the Lord came to who?! Jonah?! Really?” But this reminds us of something profound:

The word of the Lord doesn’t come to those who deserve it.

God does not show partiality when revealing himself. He simply reveals himself and invites a response. People don’t always respond appropriately—they ignore him, misuse what they’ve heard, filter it through political lenses, or even run away. Even so, God is willing to invite even the worst of us—and the worst in us—to respond to who he is.

The GPS Recalculates

So what does God invite Jonah to do?

“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”

Jonah 1:2

Where God sends Jonah is just as shocking as who receives the Word. Jonah from little Gath-hepher sent to the great city of Nineveh. That would be like God calling someone from a backwoods town in Saskatchewan to go to Dubai. There’s a massive cultural disconnect.

But even worse, Nineveh was not exactly a tourist destination. In the ancient world, it was a terrible, terrible place—the capital of the Assyrian empire. As Jewish writer Hayyim Lewis describes:

The Assyrians were the Nazi storm-troopers of the ancient world. They were the pitiless power-crazed foe. They uprooted entire peoples in their fury for conquest. They extinguished the Northern Kingdom of Israel. For Jonah, Nineveh, then, was no ordinary city; it carried doom-laden, tragic memories, it stood as a symbol of evil incarnate.

We have ancient writings that vividly describe how commanders from Nineveh would skin people alive and pile up their flesh for miles. Nineveh was genuinely horrific. Unsurprisingly, Nineveh’s evil “came up before the Lord.”

Surely Jonah would have thought, “Excuse me, God? Did I hear you right? The Assyrians? Their capital, Nineveh?”

Remember, Jonah is a prophet concerned—so far in his career—about Israel. Expanding Israel’s borders. Building walls. Separating Israel from people like the Assyrians. Surely Jonah would be thinking, “God, you’re calling the wrong person. I’m for Israel—not the Assyrians. I’m concerned about Jerusalem—not Nineveh.” But God says to Jonah: Go to another nation, go to another city, go outside the borders of Israel, go to Nineveh. Get out of Israel—I’m concerned about Nineveh and their evil.

Perhaps we’d feel the weight of this if God said to us:

“Go to Nigeria and prophesy against Boko Haram” or “Go to Thailand and prophesy against the ‘Piglet Gangs’ who control child prostitution.” Or perhaps more aptly, “Go to Libya and prophesy against ISIS.” Call out their evil, but don’t do it from home, and no hashtags allowed. Go to their territory—do it there on their home turf!

Imagine being called to leave the ideological walls we’ve built for safety. No longer protected by freedom of speech, familiar laws, our borders, and boundaries that separate us from such groups. This might come close to what Jonah was feeling—a big, unusual, confusing, terrifying calling that pushes him outside everything comfortable and everything he believes in: :God is the God of Israel—not the God of Nineveh.”

The Great Escape

In response to the Word, Jonah “the faithful” shows his cards:

But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

Jonah 1:3

Jonah, in telling this, can’t emphasize enough how much he tried to flee. He rose and fled. He got up and got out of town. He headed in the opposite direction—as far as he could go. Nineveh was north, so he goes south. He went down to Joppa, 550 miles southwest of Nineveh. He went down into the ship. He’s descending from the call. He wanted to go to Tarshish in the far west, another 2,500 miles away. He tried to get as far away from God’s calling as possible.

And where he tries to go is telling.

By any measure, Tarshish was the opposite of Nineveh. We don’t know much about Tarshish, but it’s described as a sort of Shangri-La—a utopian city. It was a port city, likely with beaches, beauty, and tranquility. In modern terms, if you were in Israel, it would be like God saying “Go to Iraq,” and you deciding, “Well, I could go to Iraq, or I could head to the coast of Spain. I’ll go to Costa de la luz. Take in the sun and the beach. Kick back, drink Sangria.”

Partial Obedience Is Actually Disobedience

There’s complexity here that we shouldn't overlook. Technically, Jonah obeys half of God’s command. He rises up and he goes. That’s what God said to do! He just changes the location. “I won't go to Nineveh, I’ll go to Tarshish.” And if we’re clever, we’ll convince ourselves that’s close enough to the command, so we’re okay.

This reminds me of when my professional life started with a paper route—a true rite of passage.

I delivered the Pennysaver. I had a command: “Go! Deliver newspapers to the houses on your route.” So I went. With my Mom—in her Volvo. And I faithfully delivered newspapers. I discovered quickly how boring it was to put paper after paper in mailbox after mailbox. My Mom grew tired of it too. One day she said, “Love, I have my own job. It’s time you do this on your own.”

I was not thrilled to bear this burden alone. But I went, with my newspapers in my satchel. But I decided to subtly change the command: “I’ll go deliver newspapers. I’ll just change where.”

I found a drainage ditch that seemed hungry for newspapers. So, I shoved the hundred-or-so papers into it. Out of sight, out of mind. I wandered aimlessly through the neighbourhood until I figured I’d been gone long enough to have believably delivered the papers.

Unfortunately, the drainage ditch was more faithful at its job than I was with mine.

The next day it rained.

And because the ditch was blocked, I inadvertently flooded a few yards. It didn’t take much detective work to find the culprit. My mom drove me to the scene of the crime, and I had to pull soggy newspapers out of a drainage ditch, in the rain.

The kicker: my Mom watched from the warmth of her Volvo.

I took the command seriously. I went and “delivered” newspapers that day. But I twisted the command—I changed their destination.

Our problem is that if God said to us, “Go to Maui,” many of us would smile and say, “Thank you, Lord! Jesus! Hallelujah!” Well, we’d be more reserved outwardly. But inwardly: yes! Maui is our Tarshish. It’s exciting, vibrant, full of opportunity and culture. Many of our metropolitan centres are beautiful and desirable. To us, they’re Tarshish—not Nineveh. So we would gladly say “Yes” if God asked us to go.

But I suggest we would still twist God’s command.

God doesn’t just say “Go” to Jonah. He says, “Go and call out against Nineveh for their evil has come up before me.”

We need to recognize that every place—whether its a bustling metropolis or quiet rural community—is both Tarshish and Nineveh.

Most of us focus on the Tarshish part: the good, the beauty. But we neglect the problems. We have blinders to our own Nineveh. Sure, our communities aren’t conducting bloodthirsty military campaigns. But there’s still injustice in our streets. Intense loneliness and isolation. An ever-increasing disparity between rich and poor. Racial divisions. Human trafficking. Ongoing homelessness. Even in rural communities, there’s addiction, domestic violence, poverty, and environmental exploitation.

We must also be aware not to focus only on our communities as evil, bad Nineveh. Places are more nuanced. There are deep social and cultural problems. There is spiritual emptiness. But there is good that can be affirmed and celebrated. There are common causes we can partner in. Every location is more complex than being all bad or all good. And God calls us to speak to both realities.

We Want To Run

The real, underlying issue is that we want to run away from God’s call. Tucked away in our souls is an inclination to run away from joining God in what he’s doing in the world—what he’s doing in our communities, let alone what he’s doing in the lives of our enemies.

We view our location just as a place to live. We get sucked into our daily rhythms. We don’t consistently live within our communities as if we’re called to them for the sake of what God wants to do. We neglect our responsibility to create time and space to give rather than taking. We see where we live as something to enjoy or simply endure, something to consume or escape from.

Often, there’s little to no room in our lives to participate in spiritual, social, and cultural renewal. We have no margin. We have no space for God’s mission. Usually, it’s because our lives have become bloated from living solely for ourselves—our own enjoyment, goals, and wants—or it’s because we’re in a season or stage of life that demands so much there’s nothing left to give.

Yet sometimes the truth is that we don’t want to make the sacrifice of comfort and time required to get engaged. We would rather settle for creating a safe little church bubble that doesn’t seep into every part of our lives.

We don’t mind if God is the one who reaches out and extends the gospel; we just don’t want God to do it in and through us. Essentially, we’re saying, “You can be Lord, just not Lord over every part of our lives.”

These quiet thoughts that we try to deny unveil that we’re not much different than Jonah. We want a smaller version of God. A God who fits within our own comforts and desires, who can make no inconvenient demands upon our lives. But if this is the case, we’re ultimately settling for an idol made in our own image.

Running from God's Face

What we fail to realize is that when we flee from God’s call to join in his mission, we’re actually fleeing from God himself.

Twice in verse 3, we’re told that Jonah was fleeing “from the presence of the Lord.” This phrase in Hebrew is literally “the face of the Lord.” This was Israel's way of describing their intimate and unique relationship with God. So, Jonah isn’t just fleeing from God’s presence; he is fleeing from who God is—the intimacy of truly knowing him.

The reality is that Jonah doesn’t like what he sees:

God has always been a God of mission.

Ever since the first disobedient bites in the Garden of Eden, God has been actively working within the world to restore it to himself. When God set Israel apart as a nation, it was never for their own sake, but for his purpose in the world.

Israel was set apart to be a light and a blessing to the world. By how they lived, they were called to show the world God’s ways, show his goodness, be a sign, a witness—a picture of the way things are meant to be. Because God is not solely the God of Israel but the God of every nation, the God of the universe—even the God of the Assyrians in Nineveh. If Israel looked to God's face, this is what they would see: his face is set toward the world—including their enemies.

God’s eyes always find the poor, the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, the slave, and the sinner. God aches for humanity to be restored to him—even his enemies. He weeps over more than just individuals. He weeps for the systemic brokenness and evil in cities, towns, and rural communities alike.

Jesus himself wept over Jerusalem. And we see the face of God in Christ; that’s why he is so alluring. That’s why Jesus draws us in. So if we want to know our calling and mission within our communities, we gaze upon the face of Jesus, the very face of God. Jesus is the one who cares for the poor and the widows, who adopts the orphans, who welcomes the foreigner, slaves, and sinners.

If we want to see the face of Jesus more fully in our lives, it’ll likely happen when we care for others as if they are Christ himself. As Jesus teaches in Matthew 25:31-46:

"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.'"

All of this sounds good and beautiful and worth it. And yet, day in and day out, we can still flee from living like this. That’s what Jonah forces us to confront:

Why is it that we flee from God?

What is going on in our hearts that we run from his call?

Why do we turn away from seeing Christ in the stranger?

We don’t get the full answer yet. But there’s something in our hearts that echoes the story of Jonah—the part that convinces us that doing half of what God asks is enough, the part that tries to leave God behind, the part that avoids his presence, the part that simply doesn’t want God to be God.

This is a part of ourselves worth wrestling with.