As We Forgive

Jonah 4:1-11,
Psalm 85:3-6,9-10
Luke 11:1-4

But could Job forgive?

The first reading Jonah 4:1-11, shows Jonah unforgiving towards sinners. He actually wanted sinners to perish in their sinfulness and that was why he refused in the first place to preach to the people of Nineveh. Thus, Jonah said, “Ah, Lord, is not this just as I said would happen when I was still at home? That was why I went and fled to Tarshish: I knew that you were a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness, relenting from evil.”

Yes, God forgave the people of Nineveh when the repented from their sins.

Many of us are like the righteous Job who would want sinners to perish in their sins perhaps in order to prove to others that the wages of sin is death.

But, God sees it differently. He wants the repentance of sinners.

With the Castor Oil, God demonstrated to Job how foolish and wrong he Job was to have compassion on a castor oil plant without having compassion on the sinners of Nineveh.

God shows so much compassion to sinners such that to Job he said, “And am I not to feel sorry for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, to say nothing of all the animals?”

From this, one could easily understand that God wants to put sinners in the right perspective because they do not know their left and right; they don’t know why they are doing.

We humans and Christians sometimes feel that sinners deserve to die as Job thought. But have we considered whether the sinners actually knew what they were doing; compassion and mercy.

In the Gospel reading Luke 11:1-4, Jesus thought the disciples how to pray and in it was, “and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive each one who is in debt to us.”

As Christians, we sometimes feel that sinners are entitled to death and divine punishment. What if God treats us in the same way as enshrined in that pray?

Indeed, we all must develope that compassionate heart as enshrined in the “Our Father.”

God wants all to be saved because He created us all and we are all His children. How then do you think that God would want one of His Children to perish just like that?

Therefore, we must learn and we are learning the heart of God when we forgive sinners, have compassion on them, and those who trespass against us. That is, that God is compassionate and merciful. So we too must.

©Fr. Henry Charles N. Umelechi