Jonah--God's Mercy, Love, Grace

The final words of Jonah set the theme for the book--"should I not pity??..." It's fair to say that Jonah probably wrote these words after thinking about what God had done with him, what it meant, and what it meant to humankind.
God cares for us.  He knows that some of us are evil, and will never turn from our evil ways to worship and serve Him.  He tries anyway.  Paul wrote, "The goodness of God [is intended] to lead you to repentance..." and so it is.  He means us to understand that the evil we see, the evil in our hearts, the evil that is done to us, is NOT His plan.
His plan is for a world without evil, without dictators who have secret police, without Islamic militants, without rockets and bombs and bullets. His plan is a world without disease, without death, without sorrow.
In a sense, much that God desires for mankind is wrapped up in Jonah--
God wants His servants to serve Him 1:1, 2:8-3:2).
God wants His servants to communicate Him 3:2, 1:8-10.
God wants people to listen and respond, so that they in turn can be His servants. 1:8-10,16; 3:5-10.
God wants you to have another chance--see Jonah 3, 4:11.
The problem of evil has been studied a great deal--however, the real problem of evil is what's inside us. The sickness of mankind is a sickness of the soul, and it's played out on every battlefield, in every courtroom, hospital, graveyard.
God has the answer to that sickness, and it's stunningly simple: repent.  Serve God.  Don't look at the evil in others.  Look at the evil in yourself.  Call no man an "infidel." Let God judge infidels.  You judge yourself, because when you judge yourself, you will not be condemned with the world. That's what happened in Nineveh, what Jonah saw, what at first he could not process.  Jonah wanted Nineveh to be destroyed.  He wanted his prophecy fulfilled: "40 days from now, Nineveh shall be destroyed..."
Why?  Because the Ninevites, in the person of the Assyrians (Nineveh was the capital of Assyria) had literally ruined the land of Israel, killed much of its population, put it to tribute, and impoverished the entire nation.  Jonah hated the Assyrians--and the Ninevites.  He wanted them dead.  So when God offered them life and hope, Jonah hated the success of his own ministry.  So eventually he has the conversation with the LORD that ends up as we read:
"Should I not pity Nineveh?..."
As Jonah meditated on this, he must have realized that his own ministry was a revelation of the mind of God--He is merciful, gracious, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.
He is the God of second chances.
He is the God of YOUR second chance.
Turn to Him.

Dying...Do you really want to choose that?

I happened across the book of Jonah in my reading yesterday and today, and I began to think of Jonah in a somewhat different way--God told Jonah, "Go preach to Nineveh." Jonah didn't want to do that, so he ran from God, and boarded a ship going to Tarshish. Modern scholarship is in disagreement regarding its exact location, but one of the Assyrian kings (capital city of where Jonah was supposed to go) identifies it as the most distant place he had subjugated.  In other words, it was as far away as you can go from Assyria/Nineveh, and still be in a world with which Jonah was vaguely familiar.
Once Jonah boards the ship, and they are on their way, God sends a storm, which disables the ship, and the sailors are forced to throw Jonah overboard.
Jonah has actually asked them to do so--figuring, I suppose, that even death is better than having to go to Assyria to preach the message God wants, since that message is calculated to get Nineveh to repent, and Jonah hates the Assyrians for the things they've done to his country.
So the sailors throw Jonah into the ocean, and suddenly the ocean quiets.  However, Jonah, who expected to die, is eventually swallowed by a huge fish (whale).  Three days later, Jonah, who had thought "Anything is preferable to preaching to Nineveh," has now had a revelation--he doesn't want to be digested. Death is not what he really wants in exchange for leaving Nineveh to its own devices. Jonah wants to live.
At this point, I began to think, "Isn't that how it usually is? All of us want to live. All of us would want a second chance to choose life, if we could."
And that was true of Jonah.  When he had time to think, to pray, to suffer, he realized that life is better than death--but the only way God would let him out of his fishy prison was if he promised to do what God called him to do in the first place, so he says in Jonah 2:9, "I will pay what I have vowed..."
We are greatly blessed when God gives us 2nd and 3rd and 4th (ad infinitum) chances, and death is not a good choice, since by choosing death, we never get to see what God will do with the rest of our lives.
Jonah preached the message God gave him, and the entire city of Nineveh repented.  At the end, God gives Jonah the true point of the story:
"You had pity on the plant (a plant Jonah sat under, but which died); should I not have pity on Nineveh, that great city...??"
God pities wicked men, women, and children.  None is ever too far from Him.  He can always find them, call them to repent, and give them life. Of course, God is silent about Jonah himself in his reminder, but  God pitied Jonah, his running, his anger, his depression, his rebellion--and God wanted Jonah to live. It wasn't as if Jonah had to be the one to deliver the message of repentance to Nineveh: others could do that--but God didn't want Jonah to lose his life.  Jonah's life was valuable to God. God chased him down, caught him, and redirected him.
The same is true of you.
God doesn't want you to lose your life, to give up, to be destroyed, to be ruined.  His mercy is infinite, and He desires for you to have life.
Accept it.  Don't love death.  Love life. Love God.  Let your path end in His presence, not in rebellion and anger, or sorrow and self-pity.
I have no idea what your word from God has been, or is, or will be.  But I know this. Life is better than death.  If you are running, STOP. Turn to Him.  Let Him give you life. It is much better than death.  Choose life.