What Is Our Sorrow?

What Is Our Sorrow?

Jonah had been sent on a very important mission. He was supposed to be God’s messenger to Nineveh, but his personal honor was in the way, and he opposed God’s thoughts and plans. Jonah would rather let an entire city full of people be destroyed just for the sake of preserving his honor. He was so preoccupied with himself and his trivial matters that his sorrow was aroused even to death because of the plant that came up in a night and perished in a night. This is how wretched a human being is.

If we have been converted to God we have been given a high and holy task, which is our own salvation and the salvation of others. The Lord said to Jonah, “‘You have had pity on the plant . . . And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much livestock?’” Jonah 4:10-11. There was quite a difference in their sorrow. What is our sorrow?! What do we pity in these last, dark, and evil times? What occupies our minds and our thoughts? People who are converted do suffer and are anxious; but if we were to examine it more closely it would become evident that quite often their sorrow is only a selfish sorrow over trifles compared to the sorrow over that great city. Our big ego is full of demands, wishes, and plans; it likes and it dislikes. If a person does not get what he wants, he moans and suffers— because of a comment that was made about him, or because others did not pay sufficient attention to him, or maybe over the fact that God has decided to give his sweetheart to someone else. These are all foolish sorrows. People are restless and nervous and are weighed down by all kinds of things, but they are totally ignorant of the sorrow over the great city.

People want to be comfortable and enjoy their existence by means of all kinds of things. However, God has greater plans for their lives than just being satisfied with enjoying earthly things. Therefore He lets those things with which they are so busy and which they enjoy so much fade away. However, instead of getting their eyes opened to their high and holy calling and life’s task—for their own and other people’s salvation—they begin to pity themselves and, like Jonah, are so angry they wish they were dead because of these earthly rags.

May we awaken to our exalted task. May we have the others’ salvation from sin on our hearts. Let us sorrow after the mind of Christ—He who did not live for Himself.

In Ezekiel 9 we read about the angel who was to put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sighed and cried over all the abominations that were being done. Those who did not have this sorrow were to be utterly slain.

Satan, who is the god of this world, does everything he can to hinder us from laying hold of our heavenly calling. He does his best to get us to be occupied with things that are of less value. Perhaps we spend hundreds of hours of our brief and precious life reading all kinds of things that are not necessary for our earthly profession, and most certainly not for eternity. The time hereafter is short, so let us see to it that we get done what is of the greatest importance for eternity.

Now is the time to sow; however, what is sown in dishonor and weakness will be raised in glory and power.