Playing "Nose Goes" with God

Posted 7/13/2008 by smartblackboy in Labels: , , , , , , ,


I was hanging out with a bunch of friends one evening, and we were all enjoying tasty mixed drinks.

At some point in the night we ran out of ice and realized that someone needed to leave the gathering to go downstairs and get more ice.

No one wanted to get the ice, so we decided to play the game "Nose Goes" where the last person who touches their nose had to perform the task in question, in this case to get ice.

I am sure many of Art Star's readers have played "nose goes" with their friends as a way to solve minor disputes.

The essence of "nose goes" is that by touching our nose we say "Here I am, send somebody else!"

When we were young, some of us heard the story about Jonah and the Whale.

It is a classic story, both dramatic and gripping, a prophet who is eaten by a whale, and lives inside the whale's belly for three days.

However, as children most of us missed the main point of Jonah.

The reason that Jonah was devoured by the whale was because he decided to play "Nose Goes" with God.

Jonah - like many of us - was a good man. He was a prophet, a man of God. Jonah despised wickedness and evil. In fact, he believed that you reap what you sow - and that the sinful will perish.

So, when God asked Jonah to go to a town full of wicked people in order to save them - Jonah said "Here I am Lord, send somebody else."

Sometimes we can become wrapped up in our righteousness. Sometimes we would rather see the wicked perish than to give them a chance to repent and receive the grace of God.

Also, many of us would rather run away than do what the Lord asks us to do. In fact, I would suggest that anytime we want to disobey God there is always an available ship. Resources never seem to be scarce when you want to do wrong.

So, Jonah fled from God in a ship and the Lord sent a storm after him. We can run but we can't hide from God. Even though Jonah was going opposite of where God wanted him to go - "the hound of heaven" found Jonah and sent a storm his way.

Now, everyone who is reading this isn't like Jonah. You might not ever try to play "Nose Goes" with God. However, we are all sailor's guiding our own ships.

The sailor's had to suffer a storm from God because of who they had let on their ship. In our age of tolerance, openness, and compassion - sometimes we let people get close to us without actually knowing who they are.

Then, we become victims of proximity of other people's storms.

Even without knowledge of D.N.A. the old folks used to say "who is their daddy, and who is their mama" because they knew that "the apple seldom falls far from the tree."

We all know the rest of the story - Jonah was thrown overboard, swallowed by a Whale, was spat up to the shore three days later, and went on to do what God asked him to do in the first place.

How much easier would our lives be if we just listened to God from the start?

As we continue doing good things in this world, let us pray that we never become too self-righteous to realize that repentance and grace is always better than punishment.

Let us pray that we have the discernment to know who we let into our ships and our inner circles so that we don't become victims of storms by proximity.

Let us pray that when God calls us, we won't try to run and hide, we won't try to play "nose goes" with God, but we will be able to say "Here I am Lord, use me."

Amen.

2 comment(s) to... “Playing "Nose Goes" with God”

2 comments:

CtotheB said...

You ain't ever lied...



smartblackboy said...

lol actually...




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