Jonah Goes to Ukraine?

Hi Everyone,

No, Ukraine isn't the next place Jonah flees to from the Lord. Though if he'd thought of it I bet he would have.

But this trip to Ukraine has me thinking about worship, and I've just finished a 4-week series on Jonah. It strikes me that one could think of Jonah as a book about worship. Think of chapter 1 as an extended "call to worship" (just who is it that's worshiping Yahweh in verse 16? Not the Israelite prophet!). Chapter 2 is about prayer ... because it is one. Think of chapter 3 as big, wide assurance of pardon ("there's a wideness in God's mercy, like the wideness of the sea"). And chapter 4 is a commissioning - a call to share God's large concern for all people and his creation.

It might have been nice to develop some of this for Ukraine. Maybe it'll show up somewhere along the way anyhow.

Here's a prayer of confession that I led my congregation (All Nations Church) in this morning; I adapted it from a marvelous book of poems on Jonah by Thomas John Carlisle:

Lord God of heaven,

when we review

our many shows of disrespect to you,

our bitter judgments,

our pride,

our arrogant assumptions,

our brittle allegiance,

our strategies to outwit you,

and our mountain of excuses for all these,

we condemn ourselves.

O God have mercy;

O Christ have mercy,

on the pitiable

and on the pitiless

and on the pitifully petty

...like Jonah

...like us.

We condemn ourselves.

But we are saved by your grace.

We leave for Ukraine tomorrow! We finally get to meet the de Vuyst family!

Peace,

Dave