RTWW 2: Bitterness

Scripture: Jonah 4

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

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4 But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

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5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

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9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

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“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

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10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

Reflection

As most know, I study computer science and business (at ivey). Unfortunately for me, this means that one of the goals I have in my life is to find a job for the summer. This job hunt has been going on ever since I entered university, and it never really ends. You can always be networking more, always be chatting more, always be prepping more. Securing a summary internship now means you have time to grind even harder for the next one. Now this burden has always been weighing upon me, and it’s always caused great friction in my relationship with God. I lack faith that he’ll provide, I lack the trust that whatever job he appoints for me is right, and I lack the gratitude to be thankful for whatever he does provide.

This december, these thoughts all changed when I received an email informing me I had made the final stage of the interviewing process. This opportunity felt perfect in my head - based in america, getting paid in USD, a fun company that I’d actually like working for, fun products, and most importantly, high prestige. If I got this internship I would actually be the first person from Ivey to intern in this role. Ecstatic, I started to thank God for his wondrous plan. I praised him for his deep and thoughtful insight, I knew he had it all planned out since the start. You see, my burden from finding a summer internship came from a myriad of factors - insecurity from feeling like I was falling behind my friends at waterloo, financial worries as I saw my tuition payments grow, anxiety about what my future career would look like with the state of the market… the list went on and on an on. This felt like God was delivering the perfect solution to all my problems - with just one job all this issues would be resolved.

When I got my rejection in my email, I was devastated. Just like Jonah, I said to God, it would be better to die then to live. I felt so bitter at God, and so angry that this job which I thought should be mine was taken away from me. Now - often times we feel this way. We fill angry and bitter at God when we feel he takes away something that is rightfully ours. We feel upset that the way isn’t the way that we want it. There’s a good sermon about it (from Christ City) that really helped me understand where these angry and bitter emotions come from. But the core is that we expect God to give us something simply out of the fact that we want it.

When you look into my life from a third perspective, you’ll see that I was just like jonah. Just like the plant sprung up without his work, so did this opportunity come. What was God trying to teach Jonah, and what was God trying to teach me? These questions are good to reflect on, but in this scenario I feel like that’s the wrong thing to focus on. We often focus on that one event, that one vine that once provided us shade, and the loss of that vine call us to question what the point of it all is. However, if Jonah could just see the great love and mercy of God, the God who loved the sinful ninevites, the God who loved us so much he would send our son, do you think he would question why God would send a vine and take away the vine? Focusing on who our God is the key to understanding what our God does.