Jonah

The Reluctant Hero

You might like to do the first task in a pair/small group and the next bits on your own. Up to you.

1. Jonah ends up angry because he disagreed all along with God's plan, (to show mercy to the Ninevites) and he goes outside to sulk.

In Moby Dick, Father Mapple describes Jonah's battle as the struggle with obedience to God:
... if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves wherein the hardness of obeying God consists. (Moby Dick)

When has your faith in God asked you to disobey yourself?

2. God's dealings with the angry Jonah go something like this:
God makes a vine grow beside Jonah which shades him from the sun. This cheers Jonah up. Then God provides a worm that eats the vine which makes Jonah hot and probably even more angry.
Then God says:
You have been concerned about the vine though you did not tend it or make it grow. But Ninevah has more than 120,000 people – and cattle! Should I not be concerned about that?

That's it.

What do you think Jonah's response might have been?

Write the final sentence or draw a final picture for the story and stick it up on the tree.