Golfers have a wonderful word: “mulligan.” Hit a bad shot off the first tee, and your buddies might let you take it over. No penalty. A second chance.
Jonah needed a mulligan. A big one.
God told Jonah, “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it.” So Jonah got up and went… in exactly the opposite direction. He bought a ticket on a ship headed for Tarshish, about as far from Nineveh as a person could get.
Jonah didn’t like the Ninevites. They were the enemies of Israel, and they were famous for their cruelty. Jonah didn’t want to warn them. He wanted them to get what they deserved.
You probably know what happened next. A violent storm. A frightened crew. Jonah thrown overboard. And then, a huge fish swallowed him whole.
For three days and three nights, Jonah sat in the belly of that fish. That’s a long time to think. So Jonah prayed. And the fish spit him out onto dry land.
And then comes one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible: “Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time.”
A second time. God didn’t fire Jonah. God gave him a mulligan.
This time, Jonah went to Nineveh. He preached. And the whole city, from the king on down, turned to God. So God gave Nineveh a second chance, too.
Jonah, by the way, was not happy about that. He went outside the city and sulked.
But God’s message was clear: He is the God of second chances. For runaway prophets. For wicked cities. For you. Even for the people we don’t think deserve one.
Prayer:
Dear Heavenly Father, thank-you for being the God of second chances. Thank-you for not giving up on me when I run the wrong way. Thank-you for helping me give second chances to others, just like You give them to me. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Wikipedia: Jonah, Book of Jonah, Nineveh
Look-It Up:
The whole story is told in the four short chapters of Jonah.
Now the LORD provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
Free Bonus:
Was it a whale? The Hebrew simply says a “great fish.” The idea of a whale comes from the King James Version of Matthew 12:40, where Jesus compares His own three days in the tomb to Jonah’s three days in the “whale’s belly.”
Jonah sailed from the port of Joppa, today part of Tel Aviv, Israel.
The ruins of ancient Nineveh lie across the Tigris River from the modern city of Mosul, Iraq.