Item number three on our list of Seven Faith Practices is “read and study the Bible.” Each week we, as a congregation, will be reading one chapter from a book of the Bible. Currently, we are reading the non-Pauline Epistles.
We will continue with our “one chapter per week” schedule. I hope you will consider joining us as we practice our faith!
Our reading schedule is as follows: for the week starting…
Faith Practice #3 Reading Schedule...
October 27 – Jude
November 3 – Jonah 1
November 10 – Jonah 2
November 17 – Jonah 3
November 24 – Jonah 4
The book of Jonah is one of the most surprising and subversive stories in all of Scripture. It’s short—just four chapters—but it overturns almost every expectation we might have about prophets, enemies, and the mercy of God.
Unlike other prophetic books, Jonah isn’t a collection of divine speeches. It’s a story about a prophet—a prophet who runs from God, argues with God, and never quite seems to understand God’s heart. Jonah is called to go east to Nineveh, the capital of the brutal Assyrian Empire, but he flees west, boarding a ship to Tarshish—the farthest place imaginable in the opposite direction.
What follows is both comic and profound. Jonah runs, but he can’t escape. A storm threatens the sailors. A great fish swallows him whole. And in the belly of that fish, Jonah prays – not with repentance exactly, but with resignation and a kind of reluctant gratitude.
The story of Jonah isn’t really about the fish, though. It’s about God’s persistent compassion – for Jonah, for Nineveh, and for everyone we’d rather write off as beyond redemption. It’s a book that asks: What if God’s mercy is bigger than we want it to be?
