Wise Leadership

There is much to be said about the leadership of a nation. It can lead us in one of two directions - toward God or further away from God. It can follow an agenda that brings further compromise into a nation, or bring that nation to a place of insight, wise choices, and true freedom.

When the king of Nineveh heard about this, he left his throne, removed his robe, put on special clothes to show that he was sorry, and sat in ashes. The king wrote a special message and sent it throughout the city: A command from the king and his great rulers: For a short time no person or animal should eat anything. No herd or flock will be allowed in the fields. Nothing living in Nineveh will eat or drink water. But every person and every animal must be covered with a special cloth to show they are sad. People must cry loudly to God. Everyone must change their life and stop doing bad things. Who knows? Maybe God will stop being angry and change his mind, and we will not be punished. God saw what the people did. He saw that they stopped doing evil. So God changed his mind and did not do what he planned. He did not punish the people. (Jonah 3:6-10)

I imagine Jonah didn't look all that 'stellar' after the raging storm, depths of the sea, and three days in the belly of the fish. I suspect he didn't smell all that great. Yet, the people looked beyond his appearance and they heard his message. The message wasn't some mamby-pamby one, either! It was 'after 40 days, Ninevah will be destroyed'. We don't have any other account of him telling them to repent, get their lives right with God, or even to worship the one True God. Plain and simple - the message God gave him.

The people hear and they immediately embrace he message, tear their clothes, turning to a period of fasting. More than than, the King of Ninevah comes off his throne, engages in the same actions of repentance, decrees that all should cry out to God for his deliverance. A true leader isn't afraid to change his ways! When those ways haven't been the best or wisest, to embrace change might be difficult, cost you something, and be a little bit 'out of character', but sometimes God needs to change the 'character' a bit in order to move us in the direction we need to be headed. Just saying!