Today's Daily Lesson comes from Jonah chapter 4 verses 6 through 11:
6 Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered.8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” “It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.” 10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
The LORD giveth and the LORD taketh away.
And when the LORD takes away; we like the Prophet Jonah whine and fume and brood and do all manner of other things to show our dissatisfaction in our entitlements not being met.
But the whole point of the Book of Jonah -- a farce about a preacher who doesn't want to preach to a people he doesn't want to hear -- is that there is no such thing as entitlement. God doesn't owe us anything. Nobody has earned God's favor over anybody else. No people are more than others to hear the good news and be saved, spared, pardoned, reprieved, or forgiven. All is grace.
A little shady vine for Jonah. The trip to the gym for me. Rain on the just and the unjust alike. We didn't earn any of it. It doesn't have to come our way. We don't deserve it. And so we ought not take it for granted. It's grace -- unmerited gift and favor.
"Count your blessings," my 5th grade teacher Marilyn Jamison used to tell us. And we should; we should count them one by one.
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