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Broken and the Blessed, Lent Day 17

by David Joynt on March 17, 2017


DAY 17

JONAH 4:4-10

 

 

Eugene Peterson writes about Jonah’s experience “under the unpredictable plant.” Anger is a great indicator of our spiritual state. Are we angry about the right things? Jonah is angry that God had mercy on 120,000 Ninevites, and that he was an instrument of that mercy. He gets angry that a shade-giving plant God grew for him gets killed. God asks him why he is so concerned about vegetation and not about people who are morally confused and spiritually lost. The book ends with this profound question. Do we share God’s concern for the ungodly, the “pagans,” those living lives that are antithetical to His law, His will, and His justice? God as creator and redeemer is the only rightful Judge.

 

 

How big is the circle of your concern?

How can you expand it?

  

FAMILY TIME:

Who in your life do you find it hardest to get along with?

Pray for this person every day for one week.

 

 

Tags: justice, redeemer

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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