Today’s reading was about Jonah, who seems a rather unlikely prophet. He had a bad attitude, he ran away from God, and he whined. A lot. But it’s stories like these that remind us that God can use any one of us, flaws and all, to accomplish His purposes. The bulk of our reading focused on the well-known whale portion of the story, but I spent some extra time on chapter four, partly because it’s my favorite part of the story, (haven’t we all sounded like Jonah at one time or another, dramatically proclaiming that “we’re so angry that we could die?”), and partly because it really shows God’s mercy to the people of Nineveh, (and their livestock!), especially when He speaks to Jonah in verse 11:

“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?”