Plants, People, and Priorities
Plants, People, and Priorities
June 2010
"So the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant" (Jonah 4:6-7).
The 2010 winter season was unusually cold. We broke records with lots of thick, wet, deep, beautiful snow. Thank the Lord for digital cameras, because I don’t think there was enough Kodak film at any drug store within driving distance that could’ve kept us amply supplied. Nobody wanted to miss even one minute of this rare Texas snowfall. We were like kids on a carousel. It was so much fun. But not so much on the ninth or tenth consecutive day of freezing temperatures when the propane tank in our yard ran out of heating fuel, leaving us with a cold house, a nonworking stove, and no hot water.
Good feeling gone.
I can’t tell you how glad I was to hear the gas man knock on our door one chilly afternoon around 4:30 to spare me another day of depending on the radiated heat from my laptop to keep me semi-warm in my sweatsuit and plush, woolly robe while I was writing. Within minutes I cranked up that thermostat as high as it’d go and quickly began defrosting myself under the vent in our bedroom ceiling. Ahhh . . . heat. Bliss.
Come on, springtime.
We can be real creatures of comfort sometimes, can’t we? If it rains too much, we gripe about having to slosh out to the grocery store with our umbrella again, or about the kids being cooped up inside with all that tightly wound energy. If it doesn’t rain enough, we moan about how hot it’s been and what the drought has done to our front lawns and potted plants. Air on, heat up, our pillows fluffed just right, our favorite snacks in the pantry—it can often take a lot to keep us from getting grouchy.
And grouchy is just the way to describe one of the most well-known prophets in all of Scripture. The runaway prophet. The renegade preacher. Jonah. After running from God’s command to share His mercy with the Ninevites, he’d been promptly disciplined and brought back to dry land via “Moby Dick”. He hesitantly agreed to go to Nineveh but still didn’t want those pagans and hated enemies of Israel to be recipients of God’s grace (Jonah 4:2).
Following his time there preaching his five word message, he made a beeline out of town like a sullen two-year-old and located a spot far enough out of fire-and-brimstone range where he hoped to watch explosives descend from the heavens. Perched there on the outskirts of Nineveh, he erected some sort of shelter from which he could view the fireworks, most likely something with walls but with nothing more than a leafy roof, affording him little protection from the sun’s glaring rays. It probably got pretty toasty in there as the day wore on—an appropriate temperature to match the red heat underneath his own collar from having very possibly helped his own enemies be spared from judgment. In fact, the very thought that these Ninevites might get on God’s good side had pushed him so far, he was at least toying with the idea of suicide. That’s how deeply this cord of Ninevite discord ran within his Hebrew blood.
And yet one simple change in his climate control situation was about to brighten his mood considerably. In a matter of moments, Jonah went from complete despair to joyous enthusiasm when “The Lord God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant” (Jonah 4:6). Think of that. The possibility that an entire city full of people might be rescued from sin and peril had made Jonah want to die. Yet the sudden appearance of an overhead shade plant was oddly exciting enough to snap him out of a horridly morose mood and set him on a new emotional path. Made him happy.
No, not just happy. “Extremely happy.”
Now who am I to judge poor Jonah? I’ve already admitted that a newly filled tank of heating fuel and the prospect of boiling some water on the stove for tea had the innate ability to fire new hope back into my shivering soul. I was more excited about our restored climate control conditions than just about anything else that could’ve happened to me that day. So I understand how Jonah felt.
And yet, conviction sinks in when I consider how God must have felt. Here was Jonah, thrilled about his own plant when God’s priorities were focused on people.
Plants or people?
It’s certainly a question worth asking … not just Jonah … but ourselves: where do our priorities lie?
Are we as bent out of shape by the homeless person in need of our loose change as we are about the cable going out? Does our heart break with as much intensity when someone hesitates to receive Christ as it does when the room we were adding on over the garage didn’t get the right paint color? Does our blood boil with more intensity when injustice happens to some people group on the other side of the planet as it does when the telephone company can’t come within a reasonable time frame to fix the problem with our line? What does our attitude about the inconveniences we face tell us about how our priorities match up with God’s.
Nothing wrong with having and enjoying the “plants” we’ve just gotta make sure they run a distant second to the people that are on the top of God’s agenda.
People or plants?
What’s at the top of your list?
“Plants, People, and Priorities” is an excerpt from “Life Interrupted: Navigating the Unexpected” by Priscilla. The Bible study on Jonah will be released in July 2010. The book will follow in March 2011.
Priscilla Shirer, Going Beyond Ministries
