Jonah is best remembered for that stint in the whale, but the rest of his story is the best bit. He gets to Ninevah, where God sent him in the first place, and he preaches to them, and they all go "Hey, yes, Jonah has a point". They repent, and live happily ever after, and Jonah says "See, God? I told you there was no point me coming here. You make me so angry. And now you're probably expecting me to be all glad and joyous that the Ninevites have repented, but I'm not. I'm angry and I'm grumpy. Aaaaargh, I'm so angry I can't even speak. I'm going to sit under this tree in the shade and be really really angry". And the story ends with God trying to get Jonah's attention, and Jonah sitting in a great big wallowing grump, probably the emotional equivalent of the belly of the whale, and not talking to him. It's marvellous.
When I get to Heaven, the first thing I'm going to do is find Jonah. I'm going to sit right down next to him, under that tree, and I'm going to join in his great big long eternal grump. And I'm going to enjoy every eternal minute of it. I think he and I will get on really well.
We'll start with schools. I don't know if he had much experience of schools, or even had children, but I expect he did. I mean, that whole whale episode was so designed to be a Favourite Kids' Bible Story down the ages, it smacks of someone who knows about children. So we'll get started on schools, and how teachers can ruin your week by expecting you to help your child produce a project, on a huge piece of poster board, about Christmas traditions in some selected nation of the world, by Friday. Don't they KNOW how much some children hate doing projects on poster boards? Don't they REALISE that Friday is very soon after Monday? (and ok, ok, I could have read the homework page on the website, or maybe my child could have communicated to me, but GET REAL, this is life). Does anyone CARE about Christmas traditions in France? I will ask Jonah if they had the tradition of teachers' seasonal gifts back in his time. You know the one. Where you feel obliged to contribute to a pot of money for someone who is doing their job, just like all the rest of us are doing our jobs. But most of us don't have jobs that involve innocent adults having to help with projects on poster board. Am I the only one who has noticed this?
You see, Heaven will be Heaven, because it will be full of people who have noticed the poster board thing. I am sure of it. I'm guessing quite a few thousand of them will have drifted towards Jonah and his tree, and it will be FABULOUS, because we can complain about poster board projects endlessly (literally endlessly). And if we get bored with that, we can move on to children and their incapacity not to strew chaos everywhere (Heaven is going to be self-tidying, did you know that?), the Post Office, churches and all their members, the media, adolescents who answer every question with "I dunno" but manage to leave out all the consonants so that it sounds like a nasalised "I uuuhhh", tax forms, sleepovers, McDonalds, customers who want to tell you about their trip to England which happened so long ago they can't remember the names of any of the places they went to, the quirks of Blogger, apostrophes in the wrong place's, library fines, and families who have the nerve to get together at Christmas - together, I tell you! - without those of their number who live on a different side of an ocean.
So Jonah, hang on in there, up there, or wherever the Nth dimension is. I am coming. I'm going to join your club. I bet it's the coolest one in town (does Heaven have towns?), with all the anarchists, the Occupy Cities people, the trailing spouses, the disgruntled mums, and all those people who just can't face the shiny smiley ones over the other side of the cloud. We will eat far too much chocolate and drink far too much wine, and be really really grumpy all the time, without it mattering one single jot. We will whitter and whinge to our hearts' content, and dance to the very loud music of rejuvenated punk rockers dressed in bin liners with safety pins through their noses and lips, who will be tediously smug about how they started the whole body-piercing craze.
And ha! I've just had a brilliant idea! We will do poster board projects... about teachers. We'll do them badly, without reading the instructions, and hand them in late (we'll need a philosopher or two to help us out with the concept of "late" in an eternal setting). Ooooh. I'm looking forward to it already.
Picture credit: phillipmartin.info
My favorite Biblical person is Jonah too. Followed closely by Esther.
ReplyDeleteI have a powerpoint about Christmas in Spain which I could send over... It's in Spanish too, that should impress the teacher ;-)
ReplyDeleteJonah is a great biblical character. But he is topped by John The Baptist, and my personal favourite: Job (maybe it's just my sense of humour, but I am sure that story is one of the earliest examples of dark Jewish wit).
ReplyDeleteI think I'm going to join you and Jonah and be eternally grumpy too. I already wondered what I was going to do with all that time on my hands.
ReplyDeleteLove the musing over the concept of "late" in Heaven. Classic.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite character (apart from Jesus ((who isn't really a character)) ) is Joseph. He seemed to keep everything up together even when the going was tough.His siblings hated him and sold him into slavery. He obtained a high position working for Pharaoh but Pharaoh's wife wrongly accused him of adultery.
ReplyDeleteHe was thrown into jail and seemed to be forgotten about. Oh and those dreams...... they were the cause of all his problems and yet they were also the the reason why he got out jail.
Yet in spite of all that he was able to resume his high position, forgive his family and save them from the great Egyptian famine. I've always loved that story.
Maggie X
Nuts in May
I just love that you've already got the whole late in the context of eternity thing on the list
ReplyDeleteRecently I was asked to list my favourite bloggers and you were at the top of the list Iota. You know why? '...apostrophes in the wrong place's'. Who else would do that? Fantastic post.
ReplyDelete