Is your heart bigger than god’s?
Is our anger random? When we get mad, when we get frustrated, when we are aggravated. Is it for no reason at all. Often times there's a reason behind the anger. God is great at revealing to us the reason behind the frustration.
God asks a piercing question: “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” Jonah answers honestly, even defiantly: “Yes… angry enough to die.” The source of anger is not people. Rather than compassion for a plant captures Jonah's heart. A plant that did nothing but offer him shade. Not even a necessity of life. While at the same time Jonah's heart goes unmoved some would say skived off from emotion for a whole group of people facing annellation.
That’s the tension in life: The limited nature of a sincere but small heart. Trying to understand God’s unlimited heart which is expansive, eternal, and creative.
God gently exposes the contrast: “You pity the plant… and should I not pity Nineveh?” God’s compassion is rooted not in convenience or comfort, but in creation. I made them. I know them. I love them.
Mankind's compassion can't help but to be selective. We cry at movies. We ache over temporary losses. We mourn things that affect our comfort, reputation, or sense of control. With no wrong being attributed to any of those things. But, God opens the windows of his divinity for us to catch a glimpse of his boundless compassion alongside our compassion. Our compassion is often effortless, temporary, and self-focused. God’s compassion is costly, patient, people-centered, and eternal.
So much so Jonahs confession of being willing to lose his life over a plant was Gods reality. He really did die for his creation.
That’s the gospel hidden in Jonah’s frustration and in every single person who's ever withheld grace of compassion from someone. At the edge of despair is God providing understanding from our experience that his grace is bigger and deeper than we can ever imagine. Compassion, at its fullest, doesn’t just feel—it sacrifices. And God doesn’t merely empathize with a broken world; He enters it, bears it, and redeems it through the cross.
When God asks, “Do you do well to be angry?” He isn’t accusing—He’s inviting us to examine what moves us, what angers us, and what receives our mercy.
The uncomfortable truth is this: we are often more like Nineveh than we care to admit—confused, lost, unaware of how close we are to destruction. And yet God’s compassion still reaches for us. That means we don’t get to stand above others deciding who deserves grace. Grace was never ours to control—it was always God’s to give.
So today, let the question linger:
What has your compassion?
And does it reflect the heart of God?
Prayer
God, expand my heart where it has grown small. Expose the places where my compassion is limited by comfort, control, or convenience. Teach me to see people the way You see them—not as categories, but as Your creation. Let me receive Your grace fully, so I can extend it freely. Amen.