Called, But Not Where You’d Think

What Jonah Teaches Us About Mercy We Don’t Want to Give

Anytime someone asks who my favorite character in the Bible is—or my favorite book—my answer is always the same: Jonah.

There’s something so deliciously, painfully human about Jonah. He’s the procrastinator’s prophet. The ADHD prophet. The one who fails—not because the task is too hard, but because it’s not the task he wants. God gives him something clear, even simple: go, speak, warn. But Jonah would rather do anything else, than go and preach to those people. I can just picture him saying, “Ugh, not that. Give me literally anything else, God. I’ll do something—just not that.

And what makes it even more maddening, more relatable, is that when Jonah does finally follow through, when he does the thing he was called to do, it’s weirdly… easy. Frustratingly easy. He preaches, they repent, God forgives, roll credits. And Jonah? Jonah’s annoyed. So annoyed, in fact, he tells God he could just die!

Every time I read Jonah’s outburst, it has a 90s Valley girl tone in my head “OMG God it was just, like, so terrible, and they, just, like did it anyway, and then you just, forgave them, like, and it’s just, so, like, depressing", I could just literally die”

I’ve noticed that in my own walk with God, sometimes it’s the easiest things that feel the most difficult. The things that seem simple, direct, ordinary, those are the ones I fight hardest against.

Most of us, when we think about what God might call us to do, immediately imagine something extreme. Something big. Something sacrificial and noble. “If God asked me to go minister to Martians,” we say, “I’d leave everything behind.”

And for some, this kind of radical abandonment is the dream. “Send me somewhere strange, Lord. Somewhere difficult. Somewhere impressive.” We crave the drama. The recognition. Maybe even the sainthood.

But what if God doesn’t want you to be the next St Francis or St. George? What if you’re not meant to fight a dragon, but just to walk next door?

The Ministry of the Mundane

What about the people who don’t go to Mars, but go to their neighbor’s porch? The people who sit at the diner sharing stories with neighbors whose views, lifestyles, or appearances feel completely different—or even opposed—to their own. Or those who listen patiently to younger generations whose values and styles seem unfamiliar or challenging.

Whatever it is that makes you uncomfortable, maybe that’s where God wants to work—not through grand gestures, but in small acts of grace. Not with a world-changing speech, but through a million cups of coffee that slowly shift hearts over time. Slow, steady, sustainable change.

God doesn’t need all of us on mission trips or in headline-making ministries. There’s more than enough work to do right where you are.

Sometimes, faith communities—and the individuals they are made up of—can find it easier to engage with people who already share many of our values and perspectives. We might focus on those who seem “acceptable” or familiar, while avoiding those whose views or backgrounds make us uncomfortable or who challenge our assumptions.

No one says it out loud—but it’s implied. Those people are too far gone. Too scary. Too… wrong. So we focus on the “acceptable others”.

But what if God’s call isn’t about finding “acceptable others,” but rather about seeing and loving the people right in front of us? Not about making grand changes, but about embracing real transformation in everyday relationships?

Grand gestures are eye-catching. They earn applause. Being written into history can be irresistible.

Real, personal, and societal transformation doesn’t usually happen on stages or through governments or in online debate. It happens in kitchens. On porches. At coffee shops. In eye contact and awkward silence and grace shared between people who are learning to love what they don't understand.

We don’t just want a call—we want an epic one. A redemptive arc. A character-building montage. We imagine that if the stakes were high enough, or the people pure enough—unspoiled by politics or pettiness or PTA meetings—we’d rise to the occasion. Like colonial-era missionaries romanticizing the “noble savage,” we sometimes imagine that far-off strangers will be easier to love than our messy, infuriating neighbors. We think it will be simpler to forgive those we’ve never met than to sit through one more Thanksgiving with Uncle Fred.

There’s a passage in The Screwtape Letters where the demon Screwtape instructs Wormwood to lean into the human target’s belief that he’s too good for the Church because he’s surrounded by such laughably ordinary people

“When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. [...] Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. [...] Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together.”

Jonah didn’t run because Nineveh was far, or exotic, or dangerous—though it was all of those things. He ran because he had no love for the people and no desire to do the work to save them. And he knew God would be merciful, he didn’t want then to receive mercy.

That’s the punchline we see when Jonah is so upset that his job was easy. He isn’t happy the city was saved—he would just as soon have seen them all turned to salt. Jonah wasn’t afraid of failing. He was afraid of God succeeding, forgiving people Jonah wouldn't have chosen to forgive.

Most of us don’t have Jonah’s excuse. We’re not being asked to preach to violent empires. We're just being asked to show up for a neighborhood potluck, or say hello to someone we avoid, or offer mercy to people we’ve written off. And still, we resist—not because it’s too big, but because it’s too personal.