Paradise—loss or found?

It depends on what (who) you care about.

White sands, blue waters, all you can eat, drink, tennis—if that’s not paradise then what is? While most of the Northeast was under snow, I was under an umbrella with a drink in hand adorned with an umbrella (virgin of course) free from cell phone and the cares of the world. As I sat each morning for surfside devotion, the rhythm of the waves would not release me from one question: What is paradise—that place of happiness? Jonah had to wrestle with that question as he sat in his happy place—an idyllic spot somewhere on a Mediterranean beach—where he pondered his next stop on his journey as a messenger of the Agent.

“You are booked for Ninevah,” his Travel Agent Supreme G-mailed him. “Go east young man along the Tigris River. “You know the people there.” 

“No way,” he churned. He didn’t bother with a reply. Jonah had other plans. He booked a cruise west to Joppa.  He hated the cruel Ninevites. 

But this itinerary change didn’t go well with all-knowing Management. A storm arose. Jonah confessed to the crew that he was its cause because he was on the run. Overboard, he went. A great fish swallowed him. In the belly of a whale, Jonah spent three days pondering his paradise loss. There he prayed to his Agent for salvation. So, his God, known for his poetic, rebooked him to go to that “un-paradise”, unforgiving place—Ninevah—to preach salvation.

Reluctantly, Jonah did just that. In a day, he traversed the Assyrian capital city, normally a three-day journey, with one message: “Judgment is coming in 40 days. Change or die. They fasted and relented and God changed His mind. The Ninevites would have their chance of paradise despite their undeserving ways. Jonah was displeased because he knew God did what He is known to do: grant grace to the unmerited. 

As Jonah took a seat atop a hill overlooking the city to see what would happen, the Agent grew a large plant whose leaves would provide shade from the scorching sun. Jonah, for a moment, was in his comfortable place—a paradise place. But Management gives and Management takes away. He sent a strong east wind to destroy the plant. Jonah was outraged at God for disrupting his paradise. Then the Agent of Grace sent a G-Mail addressed to All Who Have an Ear Let Him hear with the subject line “Plant or People Paradise”: 

 "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and [which] you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. "Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 people who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?" 

The seminal question that grows from the question of “What is paradise?” is this: Is what is important to God important to you—people or plants; your comfort or the care of others. 

You can’t have real paradise without people. As I took the tour bus from the airport to the all-inclusive resort, we went through the inner-city route through the city. One could not ignore the disparaging difference between the natives and the tourists, the haves and the have nots. Not everyone has access to paradise without the helping hands of the other. With each other, paradise is fuller. It was the natives dependent on tourism who served the resort with exuberance, who made paradise joy—well, joyful. 

Two of our family members did not arrive till late in the week due to weather delays. Paradise found. White sands, blue waters, all you can eat, drink, tennis—plants, if you will—didn’t matter as much without the flesh and blood missing who we couldn’t do without.  

 Sometimes it's the people we overlook who make paradise. People make paradise...all people, even the people not on our invite list. Be agents of grace that you were so graciously given. Don’t change the God's itinerary. 

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