Usually when someone says that something is a ‘blot on the landscape’ they refer to an unsightly human construction in the midst of nature. Or they note an out of place development amidst other more pleasing architecture. Looking across the fields recently in the February sunshine there was one ploughed field, recently relieved of its sugar beet crop surrounded by otherwise green growth. Not an unpleasant sight but a marked difference for all that.
Today’s reading from Jonah 3:1-10 recounts the prophet going to the large city of Nineveh with God’s harsh warning of impending overthrow within forty days because of the ‘evil ways and violence’ of the people. The landscape of a good place was bare and brown where it could have been full of goodness because of wrong choices made.
The brown field will be planted and in due course it will be green once more. The people of Nineveh heard the prophet’s warning and with God’s forgiveness and blessing would throb with life again.
We have started the season of Lent when the Church prepares her people for Holy Week and Easter by prayer, reflection, repentance and fasting. Easter is the time when creation throbs with the new life of the risen Christ but we must prepare for it by first reflecting on repenting of our wrong choices and inappropriate lifestyles.
A Prayer
Lord God our Father, we give thanks that as you warned the people of Nineveh of the terrible destruction that their lifestyles would lead to, as you gave them forty days in which to repent, so too we have forty days in which to repent and prepare for the complete transformation that arose from Holy Week and the Resurrection. May we not waste our reflection time but use it well so that we too may live to the full when resurrection comes for us.
We pray for the sake of Jesus, our warning and our salvation. Amen.