"And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left?" (Jonah 4:4:11)
Nineveh, the great city. Much like the other cities of man—Babel, Babylon, Rome—it was a city dedicated to itself and to its own glory. Bereft of any sense of the true God and a self-proclaimed enemy of God's people, surely they are reserved only for destruction, no?
But God has compassion on them. He loves them. He wants them to repent.
We are often like Jonah in that we hate the people who hate us, that we wish punishment and judgement on people who are wicked and who take away from our peaceful living. We prefer that God didn't care about them. Because, in our minds, for God to care about them is to not care about us. But that's not true. Because God loves his enemies.
And what we have to remember is that we, too, were enemies of God before we came to Christ, and that if it weren't for God loving his enemies and blessing those who curse him, we would be lost. Just like the Ninevites.
Like our heavenly Father, we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. And of course, there's not better prayer than that they come to faith.
Who are you praying for today?
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