Jonah’s Calamity
Jonah 4:7
But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
Just when Jonah had felt the delight of the shadowing foliage … the broadleaved gourd withered. The morning had arrived and the heat was becoming more intense, when the glad shelter was removed, and the prophet’s head was smitten with the scorching rays. “It is better for me to die than live,” exclaimed the fainting Jonah. And what caused this calamity? A worm. And is that all? No! God prepared the worm. The worm was under direct orders from heaven, and while he, doubtless, ate into the gourd, with a good appetite, following the bent of his natural constitution, nevertheless he was acting in direct obedience to God. God prepared the worm. And yet in the sixth verse we read that God prepared the gourd.… Does God, then, build up in order to destroy? And does he give comfort to His creatures in order to torment them by its removal? So reasons the carnal heart, ready to complain, and looking on all God’s conduct in its superficial aspect, its own selfish and sensuous advantage being the criterion of all its judgments.… “I do well to be angry even unto death,” is the usual style in which we greet the afflictive providence of God.…
[However] when our gourds wither it is a proof that God is near.… Prayer and humiliation are now our appropriate exercises. God has put forth His hand to summon us to these duties. Our gourd is gone, but our God is not gone, He can protect far better than a gourd. He will more than make up all our losses.
G. Kleiser, ed., The World’s Greatest Sermons
