God Prepared a Worm (Spurgeon)

"God prepared a worm," which teaches us that GOD IS IN OUR BEREAVEMENTS AND LOSSES.

Jonah's great comfort was destroyed by a very little thing. It was only a worm, but that was enough to destroy the gourd. Oh! how soon may our earthly comforts be taken away from us! There is a little fluctuation in the markets, and the prosperous merchant becomes a bankrupt. A little red spot appears in the cheek of your fair child, and in a few weeks she is taken away by decline or consumption. A very little thing may soon destroy all your comforts, and make them to be like the withered leaves of Jonah's gourd.

It was also, probably, an unseen thing that wrought this havoc. Very likely Jonah did not see that worm. God prepared it, but the prophet did not discern it, until he saw the destruction it had caused. And, my clear friends, some little unseen thing may yet come to you, and turn into grief all your present joy.

Besides, it was a very foul thing, a worm, a maggot, at the root of this gourd; and through this foul thing it withered and died. It is sometimes the sharpest bitterness of our grief when we have our joy spoiled by somebody else's sin. The venomous whisper of a wicked gossip, a foul drop from the black tongue of slander, has poisoned the very well-spring of domestic bliss. In Jonah's case, the Lord prepared the worm; and although no evil thing can be charged against the good God, yet at the back of man's free will there is the great truth of divine predestination, which, without taking any evil upon itself, yet overrules even the waywardness of man for the Lord's own glory. People often think that there is no worm which can eat into their comfort; but God can prepare one, as he did in the case of the prophet. He as much prepared the worm as he prepared the gourd, he as much destroyed the comfort as he first of all gave it to his sorrowing servant.

… lastly, I said that it was not in the text verbally, but it was there in spirit, that IN ALL THIS GOD WAS PREPARING HIS SERVANT.

Do you not see that God was teaching Jonah by the eye and by experience? Unless the Lord had put Jonah through this process, he could not so well have argued with his servant. So the gourd must go, and the wind must come, and the sun must beat upon the fainting prophet, and Jonah in his angry temper must get to feel great grief over his poor gourd which had met with such an untimely death, and then God comes to him, and says, "Art thou troubled about thy gourd? Hast thou pity upon a gourd, and should not I have pity upon a great city with more than a hundred and twenty thousand helpless children within its walls, and all those thousands of unsinning cattle? Should not I spare these, when thou wouldst have spared this tender plant, which sprang up in a night, and withered in a night?" Sometimes, God puts us through an unusual experience in order that we may the better understand him; and sometimes that we may the better know ourselves. Men who are of a hard nature must have hard usage, diamond must cut diamond, that at last the purpose of the great Owner of the jewels may be accomplished.

Then, dear heart, with thy sore afflictions, God is preparing thee to be a comforter to others. Thou distressed and troubled one, God is training thee that thou mayest be a very Barnabas, the son of consolation, to the sons and daughters of affliction in times to come. I would suggest to some of you here who have to bear double trouble that God may be preparing you for double usefulness, or he may be working out of you some unusual form of evil which might not be driven out of you unless his Holy Spirit had used these mysterious methods with you to teach you more fully his mind.