No Heart Too Hard: Thanksgiving and the Power of God’s Mercy

As you head into the Thanksgiving holiday, there’s no end to the lists running through your mind: groceries you need to buy, travel plans and dietary accommodations of your guests, and items scattered throughout the house that your children need to make disappear before the doorbell rings. 

Once you sit down at the dinner table on Thursday, you may find yourself making a few more mental lists, some that you’d never write down on a pad of paper. You file away the comments—political jabs, prejudiced remarks, or rude criticism—things you can’t believe a family member said out loud. You smile politely, try not to roll your eyes, and do what you can to maintain civility as long as the meal lasts. 

Then you glance down the table and catch sight of the seat that’s been empty for years. You think of all the excuses that person has made for not coming home—all the reasons they said they needed distance. That list hurts too much to think about. 

You turn your attention back to your guests and the activity at hand: writing down what you’re grateful for. Your pen hovers over the page, and you find yourself thinking of those whose absence, stubbornness, or hardness of heart feels heavier than you’d like to admit. 

Somewhere along the way, have you stopped expecting that God is able to move in their story? What if this year, gratitude includes trusting that God is still softening hearts—even the ones that seem impossible to crack open?

Three Glimpses of God’s Mercy in Unexpected Places 

If you’re the kind of host who loves to prepare an icebreaker for her guests, you may have a set of conversation cards that includes the question, “What historical figure would you most like to have dinner with?”

My answer today might be surprising. Over the last few months as I’ve been camped out in the book of Jonah, I’ve started imagining what it would be like to sit around the Thanksgiving table with the entire cast of characters from this Old Testament book. Jonah is remembered for the part he plays in the story, but we often forget how the others give us a glimpse of the surprising depths of God’s mercy and power. 

1. The Pagan, Polytheistic Sailors 

When we meet these men, Jonah has already disobeyed God’s command to go to Nineveh. He found a ship going to Tarshish, which was “known as the westernmost place in the Mediterranean world.”¹ He paid the fare and went down into the ship in order to flee from the Lord’s presence (Jonah 1:3). 

Then the storm began. Cue a loud boom of thunder: “The LORD threw a great wind onto the sea, and such a great storm arose on the sea that the ship threatened to break apart” (Jonah 1:4). The narrative shifts not to Jonah’s reaction, but to the sailors who were afraid and frantically tried to throw cargo into the sea to lighten the load (1:5). 

The seamen, likely “‘an international, polytheistic crew,’”² cried out to their gods. These men were used to bad weather, but they understood the gravity of this uniquely terrifying storm. Their captain found Jonah, asleep in the lowest part of the vessel, and pleaded with him to cry out to his god. As the men learned what Jonah had done, they rowed hard against the raging sea and called out to the Lord:

“Please, LORD, don’t let us perish because of this man’s life, and don’t charge us with innocent blood! For you, LORD, have done just as you pleased.” (Jonah 1:14)

As they threw Jonah into the sea, the sea calmed. “The men were seized by great fear of the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows” (Jonah 1:16). Notice that their vows and sacrifices came after the danger. They weren’t merely seeking immediate rescue from Jonah’s God: they began to seek Him out of respect for His power and awareness of His greatness: 

Daniel C. Timmer writes: “Jonah’s anti-missionary activity has ironically resulted in the conversion of non-Israelites.” Another commentator adds: “This carries us farther in the lessons of the book about God’s sovereignty. What God is going to do, he will do.”³

We don’t know the extent of the sailors’ repentance or whether they continued in the fear of the Lord. But picture these men docking their ship and arriving at your dinner table, still smelling of fish and the sea, their conversation crude and their hands calloused as they reach for a roll. Imagine them telling a story not just about a disobedient prophet and the craziest moment of their whole career—but a story about how the one true God pursued them in the most unlikely place and made His power known.

2. The Wicked, Violent Ninevites 

Once Jonah made it back to dry land (after being vomited out by the fish), he was given a second chance to go to Nineveh. His mission was stunning. As Pastor Tim Keller explains, “It was shocking first because it was a call for a Hebrew prophet to leave Israel and go out to a Gentile city. Up until then prophets had been sent only to God’s people.”⁴ This was unprecedented.

Keller notes that it was even more surprising that the God of Israel would send someone to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire: 

Assyria was one of the cruelest and most violent empires of ancient times. Assyrian kings often recorded the results of their military victories, gloating of whole plains littered with corpses and of cities burned completely to the ground. The emperor Shalmaneser III is well known for depicting torture, dismembering, and decapitations of enemies in grisly detail on large stone relief panels. Assyrian history is “as gory and bloodcurdling a history as we know.” . . . They forced friends and family members to parade with the decapitated heads of their loved ones elevated on poles . . . They burned adolescents alive. Those who survived the destruction of their cities were fated to endure cruel and violent forms of slavery. The Assyrians have been called a “terrorist state.”⁵

Who would want to invite any of these individuals over to share a meal? Jonah certainly didn’t want anything to do with them. Scholars have said that the readers of the book of Jonah would have seen him as supportive of his country’s aggressive military policy: “intensely patriotic, a highly partisan nationalist,” someone who both feared and hated the Assyrians. 

But God’s justice was far greater than Jonah’s understanding. Jonah’s short message to the people was met with belief in God. The Ninevites “proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least” (Jonah 3:5). And when the king heard, “he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes” (3:6). 

In Hebrew, Jonah’s recorded message to the Ninevites contained only five words. While he may have shared more, it’s clear it wasn’t his personality or rhetoric that caused such a public display of humility and submission, a city-wide acknowledgement that the Ninevites’ actions had violated God. It’s God’s power alone that causes true transformation. Through His grace, those who were once violent adversaries can sit at the same table as family members, sharing a meal and a story of redemption, united not by politics or ethnicity, but by the mercy and authority of God. 

3. The Angry, Prodigal Prophet 

Then there’s Jonah himself. He had seen God’s kindness extend to all nations, including pagan, polytheistic, and wicked people. He’d seen that God is sovereign and compassionate, extending mercy without limit. And in response, Jonah was furious and depressed. Once he saw that the Ninevites were spared, he sulked under a shelter, angry that God’s mercy had reached those he deemed unworthy. 

For the first part of his story, Jonah had resembled the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable, running as far and as fast as he could from his father’s call. At the end of the book, he looked far more like the older brother, standing outside the celebration with his arms crossed, refusing to rejoice that someone else had received mercy. He had eventually obeyed outwardly, but his heart was convinced that God’s grace should have boundaries shaped by his own prejudices. 

That’s where the story ends—on a cliff-hanger. But it’s possible that the book of Jonah would not have been written unless he finally learned his lesson: 

We are never told how the prophet responded to God’s final appeal. I propose, however, we can make a reasonable guess about how Jonah ultimately responded to God. How do we know Jonah was so recalcitrant, defiant, and clueless? How do we know that he made the unbelievable “I hate the God of love” speech? How do we know about his prayer inside the fish? The only way we could possibly know these things is if Jonah told others. What kind of man would let the world see what a fool he was? Only someone who had become joyfully secure in God’s love. Only someone who believed that he was simultaneously sinful but completely accepted. In short, someone who has found in the gospel of grace the very power of God (Romans 1:16).⁶

We don’t know how the story ended. But God was more than able to change Jonah, and He can do the same for the most resistant hearts in your life as well. 

Who’s Coming to Thanksgiving? 

Before you run through your guest list and think about the family and friends who will join you for Thanksgiving, have a seat at the table. Who do you most identify with in the story of Jonah? Where did God’s mercy first meet you? 

• Did He meet you like the sailors . . . in a storm you didn’t expect, as you cried out to anyone who would listen and discovered the one true God chasing you in the chaos?
• Did He meet you like the Ninevites . . . through a simple word of truth that cut through your defenses and caused a complete turnaround, stunning all who knew you? 
• Did He meet you like Jonah . . . when you were outwardly obedient but inwardly resistant, convinced that grace should be reserved for people more deserving than you? 
• Or did His mercy meet you somewhere else entirely . . . in an unexpected friendship, a moment of quiet conviction, or a slow awakening you didn’t notice until you looked back and realized He’d been pursuing you all along? 

God is still in the business of softening hearts. What He’s done in yours, what He’s done in centuries past, He’s still able to do today. What you see at your Thanksgiving dinner table is not the whole story, so don’t forget: God is not done yet. He’s still at work, even where hope seems lost. No distance is too great for Him to reach; no heart too hard for Him. 

Do you believe that? As you picture the family members or friends who seem the farthest from God, ask yourself: “Do I really trust that God is able to work in their lives and completely transform their hearts?” Ask Him to give you faith to trust that more is happening beyond what you can see, and thank Him that there is always more mercy unfolding than any of us can measure.

¹ James Bruckner, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2004), 43.

² Billy K. Smith and Franklin S. Page, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, vol. 19B, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 230, quoting J. Baldwin, “Jonah,” in The Minor Prophets: An Exegetical and Expository Commentary, ed. T. E. McComiskey (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 2:556.

3 Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy (New York: Viking, 2018), 67–68.

⁴ Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy (New York: Viking, 2018), 10.

⁵ Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy (New York: Viking, 2018), 10–11.

⁶ Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy (New York: Viking, 2018), 227–228.