And suddenly, everything went dark.<\/p>\n
The deafening roar of the waves vanished. The cold wind, the cries of the men, the deck beneath my feet\u2014all gone. First came the water. Then, a darkness so complete I no longer knew where my body ended and what surrounded me began.<\/p>\n
There were sounds. Few. Strange. Sounds I couldn’t identify.<\/p>\n
I tried to scream.<\/p>\n
No one answered.<\/p>\n
Then I realized something even more incomprehensible: I was alive.<\/p>\n
Everything I knew about the sea told me that by now, I should be dead. Very dead. But I wasn’t.<\/p>\n
Maybe I knew because I still felt the soaked clothes clinging to my body. Maybe because of the fear. Maybe because we imagine the dead don’t feel loneliness. Or do they?<\/p>\n
I don’t know.<\/p>\n
I only knew I was alive and couldn’t explain it.<\/p>\n
So I knelt as best I could. I bowed before my creator. And I prayed.<\/p>\n
Not like that empty, rote liturgy I knew by heart. But with my heart. With my whole being.<\/p>\n
I cried. I begged. I pleaded for mercy from the one who lives forever. Because besides being alive, I felt expelled from His presence. There was no deeper, no further to go.<\/p>\n
So from there, I decided to do the obvious: turn my gaze to the Creator. In the darkness. In the silence. With nothing but my voice. I turned with everything and nothing at the same time to my Creator.<\/p>\n
Days went by like this.<\/p>\n
And even though I couldn’t go deeper or further, still, the anguish rose and filled everything. And I prayed. And I was overwhelmed by His mercy. His compassion was as palpable as the darkness surrounding me.<\/p>\n
And I came to know another kind of peace. In darkness. In anguish. In peace. I had no way to reverse my situation. But the peace of my Creator was there. And I enjoyed it.<\/p>\n
As suddenly as I had entered this situation, I was returned to solid ground.<\/p>\n
Never had the sun seemed so radiant nor the sky so blue.<\/p>\n
Job’s words wouldn’t leave my mind: “I know that my redeemer lives.” The fact that I was alive was\u2014for me, at that moment\u2014the proof that my Creator was alive and merciful. Yes, if there was one thing I knew before but now had experienced, it was His mercy.<\/p>\n
If I had been cast into the depths of the sea, it was only because of my negligence, my folly, my disobedience, my confrontation with the one who had called me to go to the great city.<\/p>\n
And there I was on the beach. Alone. My thoughts and me. Just enjoying the blessing of being able to see.<\/p>\n
But I could also hear. Then He called me again. The same thing as weeks before: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it the message I give you.”<\/p>\n
Nineveh was an important city. The region’s economy passed through it. And it was huge. Three days were needed to cross it.<\/p>\n
I approached by a path that passed over a small hill before entering the city at a distance. I sat to observe it. It was really big. Huge. And with a movement of people I hadn’t seen before.<\/p>\n
So I obeyed the Creator. Simple message: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” No lengthy explanations. No more words than that. The city’s destruction was decreed. The date of its punishment was already set. And I knew they wouldn’t repent. So why prolong the message? A simple and direct sentence was enough.<\/p>\n
And then something happened that I didn’t understand. Or maybe I did understand but refused to accept.<\/p>\n
How was it possible that these people stopped and repented with such a simple sentence? It’s true their sins were blatant. But could they reach that level of recognition? I couldn’t believe it! How could they repent!?<\/p>\n
And worse, it wasn’t something that came from top to bottom. First, it was the common people. The workers. The merchants. All the people, from the most important to the simplest, proclaimed a fast as soon as the message reached them.<\/p>\n
It was incredible. And look, of the three days needed to traverse the city, I only did the first one.<\/p>\n
The news reached the King.<\/p>\n
I, brutish as I was, thought: fine, now someone will come to put order in all this, and the city will return to what it was and thus can be destroyed as it deserves. Because, folks, if there was anyone who deserved to be destroyed, it was these people. Oh yes! How they deserved it! Even God agreed with me. Wasn’t that why He called me?<\/p>\n
But no. The king proclaimed a fast. And it wasn’t a small thing. Every living being had to fast. The beautiful, soft, and showy clothes had to be exchanged for rough ones that hurt the skin.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, he ordered the abandonment of violence and evil ways. This confirmed my thesis! Even the city’s king not only knew of the barbarity in which Nineveh lived, he was complicit, and now… and now!? Now he too repented, and with him the entire city.<\/p>\n
Ahh what anger! What pain in the pit of my stomach! What bitter taste in my mouth!<\/p>\n
How could even the king repent!? Oh no, I didn’t even want to see what the Creator would do. I knew Him.<\/p>\n
That soft heart of His. I’ll tell you.<\/p>\n
I was furious.<\/p>\n
I was so angry and brutish that I found a solitary place to pray. And I said to Him: “See!? That’s why I didn’t want to come. Remember when I was calm at home? So, it was exactly for this reason that I decided to flee to Tarshish. And you know it very well. I know you. I know that heart of yours prone to forgive. I know you promise to punish, but then change your mind. I’m fed up with all this! Kill me. Go on. Enough. Take my life. It can’t be worse than living!”<\/p>\n
I had much more to say to Him. But the anger left me blind, stuttering, confused.<\/p>\n
It was fine for Him to show mercy to me and rescue me from inside that huge fish at the bottom of the sea. But to these here!? What kind of bizarre joke is this.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t say anything more. A knot formed in my throat. Tears rolled from my eyes. I couldn’t believe such a thing. Better yet, I couldn’t accept it because I knew Him. I knew He was like this.<\/p>\n
Then, I heard His voice clearly. I hadn’t heard it in the great fish. But now there was that gentle voice of His again. He asked me: “Do you have any right to be angry?”<\/p>\n
I left Him without an answer. I preferred to leave Him there without even saying a sentence. He didn’t deserve it. Once again, He had disappointed me. And not because\u2014I insist\u2014I didn’t know Him. But because I expected His justice to prevail this time instead of His mercy.<\/p>\n
It was fine for Him to be merciful with His chosen people, but with these!? A joke. It could only be a joke.<\/p>\n
I opted to give Him the cold shoulder.<\/p>\n
So I finished crossing the city. I sat at a distance and on high. I made a shelter to avoid the dry wind while I waited for what\u2014indeed\u2014would happen to the city. On one hand, I held hope that their repentance was pure deception. And on the other, I hoped the Creator would destroy everything as promised.<\/p>\n
And I waited.<\/p>\n
Then my Creator, in His mercy, made a plant grow to keep the sun from beating so hard on my head. Oh, how happy I was. Yes, I could join Job and say once again “I know that my redeemer lives.” He cared for me. He sustained me. Surely He loved me.<\/p>\n
I went to sleep peacefully. In the sweet hope that the Creator’s judgment would fall upon the city once and for all. After all, God had shown His goodness to me. Tomorrow could be the day He showed judgment on these others.<\/p>\n
The next day I woke up and saw that a worm had destroyed the plant, and it had withered. The sun was rising, and with it a strong, dry, hot wind formed. The day promised.<\/p>\n
Who knows, maybe this was all part of the destruction God was bringing upon these people! Who knows, maybe I would witness everything from the front row! If the day started like this, what would it be by noon?<\/p>\n
But the heat kept rising. And the city seemed to continue as normal. My eyes stopped distinguishing reality from imagination. And I felt almost fainting.<\/p>\n
I concluded that it was better to die. Ah… yes… nothing like death to solve everything at once.<\/p>\n
So I prayed again. I hadn’t spoken to Him since that day. This time I didn’t beat around the bush. I simply told Him that for me death was better than life. There was no need to say more. I had already wasted too much breath on Him. It was just one last favor I was asking. Simple. Efficient. My death. Nothing else made sense!!!<\/p>\n
And then He asked me the same thing again. Well, or at least almost the same. As if we hadn’t had that time of silence: “Do you have any right to be angry about the plant?”<\/p>\n
I couldn’t believe it. It could only be provocation. He who knows everything. Why would He ask such a thing again?<\/p>\n
He doesn’t need anyone to teach or instruct Him because He is the source of all knowledge and wisdom. Nothing happens without Him knowing. What kind of question was this!!??<\/p>\n
So I told Him “YES!!!!! I DO!!!!!. And I’m angry. So angry that only death seems appealing!”<\/p>\n
There are some passages I’d like to align with Jonah’s story<\/strong>. Jonah’s story is well known. But we usually overlook something that\u2014personally\u2014seems very relevant. It seems that God’s ultimate goal wasn’t just Nineveh but the prophet.<\/p>\n All of God’s speeches to Jonah can be grouped into two: a) instructions\u2014which is really just one: announce to Nineveh that its time has come. b) rhetorical questions. There are three questions God asks Jonah. The first two highlight that Jonah had no reason for all this anger. And the third opens up to a very simple conclusion: Just as Jonah had pity on the plant, shouldn’t God have pity on all these people in their ignorance?<\/p>\n The material in Jonah is abundant and lends itself to many things.<\/p>\n But let me just highlight one characteristic of Jonah before we look together at his pain.<\/p>\n Jonah knew God. It wasn’t just intellectual knowledge. It was something more visceral. To the point that he knew how God would behave in this situation. Notice that God doesn’t contradict this knowledge. It’s as if God says: exactly, that’s who I am. Of course, this doesn’t mean Jonah fully knew God. That’s impossible. But he had enough knowledge of God to understand where the story was going.<\/p>\n Jonah isn’t caught by surprise by God at this point. And there we see a virtue of reading a short text like Jonah’s in its entirety since we find this in Jonah 4:2, almost at the end of the book. So it’s valid to say that this knowledge of God is evident in Jonah’s anger. Anger arises from disappointment. There’s a frustrated expectation. Jonah’s flight doesn’t seem anchored in fear but in this life frustrated with God.<\/p>\n All of Jonah’s anger isn’t just a reaction to a political or external result; it’s directed at God, whose action frustrates what Jonah considered just to happen. The existential ambivalence of the human being makes it perfectly possible for positive feelings towards God to coexist with resentment or anger. One doesn’t negate the other. Internal anger doesn’t invalidate belief in the Creator.<\/p>\n And one of the frustrating things about the book of Jonah is exactly that this anger hovers over the entire text, but there’s no transformation of it.<\/p>\n This reminds me of Matthew 25:14-30. The negligent servant buries his talent. For lack of knowledge of his Master? No. Quite the opposite. Once again, Jesus\u2014in His parable\u2014doesn’t contradict that knowledge. It’s part of the revelation. Yes: The Master harvests where He hasn’t sown (or have you seen Jesus\u2014who persists in human form and is seated at the right hand of God\u2014healing, preaching, casting out demons?) So the knowledge was correct, the emotion and action were not.<\/p>\n And it also makes me think of the prodigal son’s brother. (Luke 15:25-32) Did he know his father? In a sense, yes. He knew how much it had cost to build all that. Even perhaps wanting to enjoy a bit of what was rightfully his, he didn’t. Why? For lack of knowledge? No. He knew the cost. He knew the father’s pain for the younger brother. The knowledge was correct. The emotions and actions were not.<\/p>\n And what touches me most: Matthew 18:21-35. The servant receives forgiveness for an unpayable debt. When it’s his turn to do the same with a lesser servant, he doesn’t. He knew what forgiveness was. He had just experienced it. Could he apply it to his fellow servant? No. Correct knowledge. Action and emotion were not.<\/p>\n Jonah knew the Lord. The negligent servant too. The prodigal son’s brother likewise. And it’s no different with the servant of the enormous debt.<\/p>\n Obviously, their knowledge is partial. That’s already been established. But I’m surprised in all four accounts by the empty space between what’s possible in God’s action and the place of human action. Or put another way: they knew some particularity of the Lord. And they knew this particularity quite deeply, we might say. However, this knowledge didn’t translate into having the same heart as the Lord. Yes, they were partial knowledges. But we think they should have been sufficient to alter their emotions and behaviors.<\/p>\n They weren’t.<\/p>\n All these stories have this bitter touch at the end.<\/strong> Someone didn’t understand how things work.<\/p>\n And\u2014in the Bible\u2014it must be so. It’s not Hollywood.<\/p>\n It must be clear that the same message produces different effects in people. The same action of God provokes different things within each of us.<\/p>\n It’s not about intellectual knowledge.<\/p>\n And worse, it’s not about lack of experience.<\/p>\n The deepest anguish of these texts is that these people came close to eternal truth. And they couldn’t be touched by it.<\/p>\n Jonah had everything to be a happy person. He longed for death because he knew his Lord, but he didn’t understand Him with his heart.<\/p>\n Next time the Lord makes you cry; don’t run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When God makes you cry, don’t run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artigos-en"],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":{"id":1476,"slug":"eu-jonas-en"},"pt":{"id":1470,"slug":"eu-jonas"},"es":{"id":1473,"slug":"eu-jonas-es"}},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/mlr63ku2e7ti.i.optimole.com\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/landscape-5.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4RFIP-nO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1478,"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions\/1478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/igrejapequena.com.br\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}