Saved by repentance & faith

Reflection:

In today’s reading the Lord used Jonah to warn the people of Nineveh regarding their pending destruction. If someone came thru your city and proclaimed such a similar message I can guarantee that many or maybe even all of us would laugh him off as a crazy loony radical. However, the residents of Jonah believed in God and that was the difference maker in this situation. Their belief and ultimate trust in God allowed the residents to realize that serious and radical conversion and repentance must take place in their lives. Even the King led the residents of Nineveh in wearing sackcloth, which is an outward sign of repenting from one’s sins and asking for the Lord’s mercy rather than wrath. Therefore, during this season of Lent we need to become selfish and focus on ourselves. Yes that may seem weird. We tend to unselfishly recognize the sin in the lives of those we interact with each day and those closest to us but we need to be selfish for once and focus on the sin in our own lives. May the fasting and other things we give up for Lent not be in vain but for the purpose of asking God to grant us repentance, forgiveness, and mercy! May Jesus convict us of the sins we need to seek repentance from during this season of Lent and let us implore Him for the strength to be transformed and refined! Then our Lenten season will allow us to rise with Jesus on Easter as closer disciple of the King!

A heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.

Reading (Jonah 3: 1 -10):

The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: “Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you.” So Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh, according to the LORD’s bidding. Now Nineveh was an enormously large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began his journey through the city, and had gone but a single day’s walk announcing, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,” when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes. Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh, by decree of the king and his nobles: “Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep,
shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water.  Man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God; every man shall turn from his evil way and from the violence he has in hand. Who knows, God may relent and forgive, and withhold his blazing wrath, so that we shall not perish.” When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.