There were days when Jonah thought he understood everything.
Those were quiet days, when daily work filled the hours and the silence demanded
no answers. But there were other days—the most important ones—when the
question returned, insistent, like a flame that refuses to go out.
It wasn't a new question.
It was the same, reformulated time and time again:
— How far does mercy extend?
Jonah was walking along the paths near his home when that thought struck him
with force. He had seen seasons come and go, he had told his story many times, he
had accepted his own fragility. And yet, something still troubled him.
He didn't doubt God. He
doubted himself.
—Have I really changed?— he wondered. —Or have I just learned to speak differently?
The honesty of that question stopped him in his tracks. He sat down on a rock and let the wind
caress his face. He wasn't seeking punishment or approval. He was seeking truth.He remembered how it had all begun: a clear call, a cowardly escape, forced
obedience, deep anger. Then, a revelation that came not with fire, but with a
fragile plant and a forgiven city.
"It was easy to understand the lesson," he thought. "The difficult part is living it every day."
Jonah knew that mercy wasn't an isolated event, but a way of seeing the world. And
that perspective had to be constantly renewed, because the human heart tends to
revert to its old defenses.
As he walked back, he came across an argument on the path. Two men were arguing
heatedly. One was accusing the other of having let him down, of having broken an old
agreement.
"He doesn't deserve another chance," one of them shouted. "He's done it before."
Jonah stopped to observe. The scene was small, ordinary, but it reflected the same
conflict he had experienced in Nineveh, only on a human scale.
"How many chances are enough?" he thought. "How many times must someone
change to be believed?"
He didn't intervene. He didn't give a speech. He just watched as the argument fizzled out
on its own, leaving both of them tired and resentful.
"Mercy is needed here too," he realized. "Not just in large, distant cities."
That night, Jonah wrote again.
No decrees.
No prophecies.
He wrote down memories, thoughts, questions. He knew his words might outlive
him, and he didn't want them to be a sugarcoated version of the story.
—If anyone reads this— he thought—, let them know that the struggle continues even after
learning the lesson.
He wrote about his anger without justifying it.
About his resistance without hiding it.
On the patience of God without reducing it to a formula.
Suddenly, it stopped. The quill remained suspended above the parchment.—How does this story end?—he wondered.
The answer came with unexpected clarity:
It doesn't end.
It is delivered.
Jonah understood that his story shouldn't end with a comfortable conclusion, but with an
unsettling invitation. Not with an absolute statement, but with a living question.
Because mercy doesn't demand spectators; it demands decisions.
At dawn, he went for another walk. The sky was clear. The earth, fertile. Life
continued with a normalcy that, he now knew, was in itself an immense gift.
He came across an elderly woman struggling to carry water. Jonah offered to help
her. They walked together for a few meters in silence.
"They say you were in faraway lands," she remarked.
- That's how it is.
—And what did you learn?
Jonah did not answer immediately. He looked at the road, the water swaying in
the pitcher, the woman's slow but steady pace.
— I learned —he finally said— that God never tires of loving… and that we do
tire of accepting that love.
The woman nodded, as if those words confirmed something she already knew.
—Then —he replied— we must remember it every day.
Jonah smiled.
- Exactly.
When they said goodbye, Jonah felt a quiet certainty: his calling hadn't
ended, it had only changed form. He was no longer the prophet who
announced destruction, but the witness of a mercy that defies limits.
And that, he understood, was more difficult.Because announcing judgment can be done from a distance.
Living mercy requires constant closeness, patience, and humility.
As evening fell, Jonah looked at the horizon again. He wasn't expecting new orders or
extraordinary signs. He was expecting something deeper: the daily opportunity to choose.
Choosing not to harden.
Choosing not to reduce others to their past.
Choosing to believe that change is possible, even when history says otherwise.
—The question remains —he thought—. And perhaps it should remain so.
Because as long as the question exists, the heart remains awake.
The story of Jonah did not end with a final sentence or a grand act. It ended—if it
could be called an ending—with a life that had learned to live with the discomfort
of grace.
And so, the question remained suspended in the air, crossing generations, cultures, and
readers:
If God had mercy on them… if God
had mercy on me… who am I to
deny it to others?
With that question gently burning inside him, Jonah
continued walking.
And mercy, silent and insistent,
continued walking with him.
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