THE WORM AND THE PLANT

“So the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered. When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, “Death is better to me than life.” (Jonah 4:6-8).

God has interesting ways of educating us in His love. We can be preoccupied with the legitimate comforts granted to us and totally ignore, neglect or be passive about the burden of the Lord or the larger needs of others. Our attention can be around petty things concerning ourselves and  miss to listen what God is trying to speak to us. We can be “angry” at God because of our inconveniences and choose to be uninterested in God’s mercy for others.

This is what happened to Jonah.

Then God said to Jonah, “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “I have good reason to be angry, even to death.” Then the Lord said, “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?”
Jonah 4:6‭-‬11 NASB

Do we pity ourselves so much that we have no compassion for others?

– Abraham Isac