Deliverance

         Did you ever meet a reformed drunkard? Smoker? Sinner?  Isn't it interesting the intensity of their response?  They are likely to sing of their salvation from the mountaintops, preach to anyone that will listen, celebrate their redemption.

       Yesterday I was talking about the maelstrom or the turbulent times in our lives. God always delivers us from those times. What was your response? Jonah's response was to obey God by walking across Ninevah ( a 3 day stroll ) to proclaim God's message. Jonah was truly thankful.

        For myself, I alluded to some horrific times in my own life. One of those was me as a married Catholic man, a father,  a man of the cloth with some standing in the community coming to the realization that I am gay.   No solution seemed correct. Every choice seemed wrong and there were no avenue of escape. Dark times. What to do? Prayer of course, heavy on the prayer, but also therapy, lots of therapy and soul searching and listening to what God was asking of me. Tough times. I confess to contemplating suicide but like I said yesterday, permanent solution for a temporary problem. For myself and for the love of God who made me as I am and has loved and supported me all my life, I came out. I moved forward.

        I did not come out to convert the world about the joys of being gay. I didn't try to convert anyone and I was not about to share the joys of anything except for the joys of a loving relationship when you have found someone you love. I did not go on a crusade.  What my response was, and still is, is to live the best life I can, to be the best me I can be to reflect God's love and let my life be a thankful journey towards my own wholeness and holiness. Perhaps be an example for others of God's abiding and more than generous love. Maybe that is a crusade of sorts. I also write this blog and do many of the things I did 'when I was straight', volunteer, work, learn, read, love. 

          Are you a thankful receiver of deliverance?  What is your response to God's love in your life? What did you do when you survived walking through the valley of the shadow of death? (Psalm 23:4)

          

Jonah 3:1-10,4:1-11

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.’So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across.Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’

 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’ And the Lord said, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.

 The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, ‘It is better for me to die than to live.’

 But God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?’ And he said, ‘Yes, angry enough to die.’ Then the Lord said, ‘You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labour and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?’