In Jonah 4, there’s a word that keeps showing up: “appointed.”
God appointed a plant.
Then He appointed a worm.
Then He appointed a scorching wind.
Each one of those appointments was God doing something on purpose – it was God’s will in action. And Jonah was totally fine with God’s appointments, so long as they lined up with his preferences. The plant gives him shade, and Jonah praises God. However, when the plant dies, Jonah gets angry enough to die.
Jonah’s story reminds us that anger often reveals a deeper resistance in our hearts, a refusal to trust that God’s will is better than our ways. That’s why God asks Jonah a soul-piercing question: “Do you do well to be angry?” In other words, “How’s that anger working for you?” The truth is, it’s not. Anger sucks the life out of us. It raises our blood pressure, wrecks our sleep, fogs our thinking, and even weakens our immune system. But more than that, it steals our joy and keeps us from trusting God.
Maybe that’s why some of us feel stuck spiritually. Our outer lives might look fine, but our inner worlds are full of resentment, bitterness, and a low-grade frustration that God isn’t playing by our rules. Here’s the invitation we encounter in Jonah 4: What if we laid our anger down today? What if we said, “God, I want your will more than I want my way”? Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Maybe the rest we need starts with releasing the anger we’ve been holding.
Today, pray this portion of the powerful Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference. Amen.
Pastor Ryan Paulson