Days of Grace

“Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Jonah 3:4



We find the number forty in the Bible more than most. The flood’s deluge lasted forty days. Jacob was embalmed for forty days. Moses visited with God on Mt. Sinai for forty days. The spies surveyed the Promised Land for forty days. Goliath taunted Israel’s army for forty days. Satan tempted Jesus for forty days. Between the resurrection and ascension, Jesus appeared to the disciples for forty days. And Jonah proclaimed that Nineveh had forty days before God brought them down.


Bad storms and big fish behind him, “Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh…He proclaimed: ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.’”


Why wait the forty days? Why not announce doom and instantly bring destruction? Nineveh’s sins surely warranted the sentence. Their idolatry was outrageous, their cruelty famous. The people were guilty with no hope of innocence, and God would have been perfectly just in sending immediate punishment. Why the delay?


Grace.


The word keeps recurring due to its abundance. God didn’t need forty days to decide Nineveh’s penalty. He wasn’t debating or doubting His verdict. His plans were complete and prepared. The days in between the announcement and the annihilation were a display of God’s patience and a gift of His mercy. Though Nineveh deserved no grace period, God gave them more than a month—enough time for fakes to be found out and skeptics to come around.


“The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance”(2 Peter 3:9). God gives us time so we will turn—away from our wrong to His righteousness. God waits so we will see His way. He holds back so we will come back.


We don’t always understand such grace. We would have scorched Sodom long before God sent burning sulfur. We would have sent the rumbling, grumbling Israelites back to slavery in Egypt a couple of months into the trip. We would have brought David to slingshot Goliath somewhere around day six. When we are the ones calling for justice, God can’t move fast enough. But when we stand with our judgment just before us, we want time to stand still.


One day it did. “Around noon the sky turned dark…and the sun stopped shining”(Luke 23:44).


God is not slow. He is grace.
Receive (and rejoice) without delay.