DAY 19

"White Cherry River", uncredited image found on
wallpaperscastle.com

Cherry Trees

Jesse Tree Symbol: a Big Fish or Whale

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A Greeting
Teach me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.
(Psalm 143:8b)

A Reading
[Jonah] prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’ And the Lord said, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort.
(Jonah 4:1-6)

Music

 
Meditative Verse
But I trust in you, O Lord;
I say, "You are my God."
(Psalm 31:14)
 
A Reflection
God, full of compassion, does not destroy Nineveh. It is Good News but we have a prophet who is so distressed that he would rather die than live! I hear Jonah saying, "I knew it! I knew you would drag me here and then you'd save them anyway!" But is it the job of the prophet to question the will of the Lord God? ...Sometimes we are not that much different from ...Jonah, although we might express ourselves differently. And God has even yet enough patience and compassion with us, too, and this is Good News!
A Prayer:

Lord God, you are gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Help us to trust you, to follow, to pay attention to the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst, and to go where you call us even if we feel the effort is fruitless, even when we don't understand and it doesn't make sense to us! In this season of Advent, help us to hear the call of John the Baptist, calling us to a baptism of repentance. When we are feeling rebellious, call us back again and again, back to yourself, back to life in you and back to the waters of our baptism where there is life, wholeness, and abundance for all. Amen.

- from "The Grumbling Prophet", a blog post by Pastor Fran Schmidt
found on her blog, devotionalwonderings

Verse for the Day
Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
my body also rests secure.
(Psalm 16:9)

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Jesse Tree image by Eric Westra

The prophet Jonah has one of the shortest books in the bible, but his story is among its most famous. Sent to bring a message of doom to the people of Nineveh, his hesitation is reflected in the raging elements and, during a storm at sea, he is thrown overboard by the men of his ship and swallowed by a "large fish" (the text doesn't say whale, but tradition has made the big fish a whale). Nineveh, his destination, is the more likely of the places proposed by scholars as the site of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, an extraordinary construction of trees and plants that appeared to 'hang over' the river. Although the gardens are largely attributed to Nebuchadnezzar, recent scholarship positions them a few hundred years later in the reign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib. The horticultural make-up of the gardens is not known, but flowering trees were an essential part of it. There is no specific mention of the 'cherry tree' in the canon of Scripture, but in a text known as Pseudo-Matthew, there is a nativity story in which the unborn Jesus commands his father to pluck cherries from a tree for his mother.

In the verses of today's carol, which captures that story, Mary and Joseph are en route to Bethlehem. Mary is hungry and asks Joseph to get her cherries from the tree. He becomes impatient and denies her twice. Then Jesus speaks from the womb to Joseph and makes the command, and Joseph suddenly understands that the request is bigger than the one he thought. Both Jonah, and Joseph in the carol, are surprised by the will of God, who speaks to them in and from the most unexpected places.

"Cherry Blossoms" by Jeff Kubina

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Lutherans Connect / Lutheran Campus Ministry Toronto.
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