The Story of Jonah (part 4)

This story is a continuation of the Jonah story to see the beginning go to the previous Jonah 3 stories.

So Jonah tells everyone who he is and what he is doing there and they stop rioting and listen to him. They are taken by his simple message of, “…in forty days you guys are toast.” People in the open mike café begin to have a change of heart about how their lives have been lived up to that point. Clearly, Jonah has made inroads in Nineveh but he has a long way to go.

Then Jonah goes to get a pizza at a local pizza shop. He goes into “Tony’s Pizza” and orders a couple of slices and a soda. The guy makin the pizza says with an Italian accent, “Hey you want thata with a anchovies or somethin?” Jonah says in his own mocking way, “No a I don’t think soa.” Then he starts to chuckle to himself. But the pizza guy just looks at him kinda strange and says, “Are you makin fun of mea?” Jonah says, “Noa I’m nota” and starts chuckling again. Then the pizza guy sees a fly buzzin around the counter and picks up one of Jonah’s slices and swats the fly in mid air with the slice of pizza. Then he throws the pizza on a plate with the other slice and hands it to Jonah and says, “Enjoy.”

Jonah takes his meal over to a booth and starts chowin down. When all of a sudden a guy comes into the place and says, “Hey has anybody seen that foreign prophet who says the county is headed for Hades in a hand basket?” Several people start looking around and they notice Jonah who is thoroughly entrenched in his meal. One guy at the table next to him says, “Excuse me senior, but are you the prophet the man is looking for?” “He wants to know about Hades and hand baskets.” Jonah looks up and says with his mouth full, “Can’t a guy eat lunch around here without getting interrupted every five minutes?” Then Jonah looks at the man who just walked in looking for him and says, “Wadda ya want anyway can’t you see I’m tryin to enjoy my meal?”

The guy walks up to Jonah and says, “Sir, everyone is trying to figure out why you came all the way over here in a big fish just to tell us that we are as good as dead. “You see sir, we just figured that if God wanted to smote us off the face of the earth He would have just done it and not told us first. “That’s why we was wonderin if maybe God was thinking about not sending us to Hades in a hand basket?” “See we are a simple people when it comes to God and stuff like that and we don’t know what is goin on. “So maybe you could tell us?”

Jonah thought about what the man just said and figured these people weren’t as ignorant about God as they thought. They knew nothing about the Hebrew God and yet figured He could show compassion and love more than any other god out there. Jonah also figured that God was watching him real close and if Jonah didn’t start telling them how to repent then God was gonna hold Jonah accountable because he was their prophet now whether he liked it or not. Yep old J was in a real tough spot. All he had to do was go back to Hebrew land and tell the tale of how Nineveh was singed right before his eyes and everybody at home was gonna love him for it. But if the Ninevites repented and started serving God then they would be spared and he would have a new people to prophet for. That didn’t sound so good at all.

While Jonah was mulling over his options the man speakin to him interrupted his thinking by asking him the prophets most feared question, “Sir what must we do to be saved?” Jonah turned to ice. The thought of one of Israel’s greatest prophets given up the keys to the kingdom to a bunch of pagans was something Jonah was not ready for just yet. So he looked at the man and said, “I am a Jew and I serve the Lord God almighty the maker of heaven and earth. That is why I am saved and you are not.” Then Jonah got up from the table and walked out of the pizzeria.

He figured that was the best way to handle the situation. He could always say to God that he told the Ninevites how to be saved, even though he didn’t and he could also say to his own people that he never told the Ninevites how to be saved. Jonah was walkin a thin line one that was barely visible, but could easily trip a grown man, even one of influence and stature like Jonah.

Eventually word got out about this guy who came out of a big fish. Even people at the highest level of government began hearing about Jonah and wanted to see him in concert. So the king of Nineveh and a bunch of his cronies bought tickets to get front row seats to see Jonah on a Saturday night. Jonah appeared on stage and the audience got real quiet. He started telling everyone that they had sinned against the Lord God Almighty by ignoring Him and treating everyone disrespectfully.

To be continued…