Jonah was very angry (Jonah 4:1) because of God's mercy to Israel's enemies. He had suffered greatly and nothing was going the way he wanted. BUT -- he prayed; he talked to God about it.
My intellect tells me that the Sovereign Lord always does right and best ... but when my emotions don't agree, do I go off in a huff or do I talk to God about it until I find His heart? Will I learn to see beyond myself, my comfort, my convenience?
Jonah's physical and emotional pain got so bad (Jonah 4:3) that he wanted to die. How like Satan to mock us at just such a time with words like "The sun shall not smite thee by day" (Psalm 121:6).
It looked like the promise failed (Jonah 4:7-8) because the sun was smiting him. The severe burns from the digestive acids in the fish's stomach made him extremely sensitive to the sun ... and now, even the sheltering gourd had withered.
What do I do in such circumstances? Will I fall into the devil's trap and believe that God has let me down, has not kept His Word? For our great benefit, we can see what Jonah could not see back then. God had not deserted him for a fraction of a second. I see how every detail was planned: GOD SENT a great wind, THE LORD PREPARED a great fish to swallow Jonah (without which he could have drowned), THE LORD SPOKE to the fish to vomit out Jonah, THE LORD PREPARED a gourd, THE LORD PREPARED a cutworm. God's promise did not fail and will not fail.
The temporary smiting of the sun was not fatal. The temporary pain we sometimes experience can be a doorway into the greater pain of our heavenly Father. The Lord had already used Jonah's shocking appearance with his bleached and burned hair and skin to dramatically underscore the message to Nineveh.
The Sovereign Lord was not failing Jonah and He will never fail me. Like Jonah, I have so much more to learn. He leads us on (Jonah 4:11), away from self-centeredness and self-pity, on and on into the grander view, the very heart and purpose of the Living God.
