As you are probably well aware, tonight at 8:00 pm on this eighth day of the eighth month of 2008 the Games of the XXIX Olympiad will commence in Beijing. In Chinese, the word for eight sounds like the word for "prosper" or "to make wealth." So in the fullest sense of the term, eight is a lucky number. In Hong Kong, tidy sums are spent to acquire car license plates filled with eights. A phone number marked by lucky eights is one you might want to hold on to. Therefore, to have all the eights line up on this Day of Eights is indeed a sign of good fortune.

A recent study I did of the book of Jonah made me familiar with the tangled fortunes of a man and a people. As I reviewed the first three chapters of this ancient book, I saw the familiar story of how Jonah refused to carry God's message of judgment to the pagan city of Nineveh. Of course, Jonah's resistance was not a good move. These chapters describe a detour through a storm and a fish's belly. However, when I came to chapter four, I was struck by something that at first seemed out of place. The book concludes with an act of God's mercy.

You see, the citizens of this wayward city were spared. Their destiny was destruction, but there had been a "change in fortunes." God's final lesson to Jonah was on the subject of repentance and forgiveness, not fire and brimstone. This doomsday prophet found out that he had been used as an instrument for the restoration of the Ninevites he hated.

We often hear that the wrath preached in Jonah is an unenlightened concept or a peculiarity of the Old Testament. In the final chapter of Jonah our eyes are opened to the hidden purpose of God, that is, that a people be reconciled to Him. We find that it is not fortune (luck) at all. It is the mysterious hand of God moving in a roundabout way so as to bring about His great good. Judging, in this sense, is an introduction to mercy. It is an opportunity for repentance. It is a path to forgiveness.

The conclusion of Jonah shows that the tables have turned. The privileged Israelite finds himself learning his lesson the hard way, and the pagan people find new life through no accomplishment of their own. We encounter here the strangest of all partnerships. Judgment is seen to be a companion to the mercy of God. As the just punishment begins to roll on a city's head, a door is opened through which a nation returns to the God it has forsaken. Likewise, as our lives hurl toward the payment that is due us, Christ intervenes and, bearing the judgment (the justice) that is to fall upon our heads, brings about a sudden "change in fortunes" that restores us to our Father (Rom. 3:21-26).