Rend Your Hearts
.
Joel 2:1-2
1. Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near, 2. a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness there is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them through the years of all generations. Fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns. The land is like the garden of Eden before them, but after them a desolate wilderness, and nothing escapes them. 12. "Yet even now," says the Lord, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13. and rend your hearts and not your garments." Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil. 25. I will restore to you the years which the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. 26. "You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. 27. You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is none else. And my people shall never again be put to shame.
Like many people, I generally view some of the Old Testament books are a little “heavy” and like to wait until I have time to really study all the intricacies of the stories. But a dear friend shared with me a few months ago that verse 25 had special significance for him. And I have since become very interested in Joel. Have you seen any television shows or movies that depict a swarm of locusts? They literally consume every living morsel in their path. They leave not one blade of grass, not one shoot of a seedling, not one seed of grain. Everything is consumed, devoured, ravenously, in a blink of an eye – and then they’re gone. They leave behind a barren and desolate landscape.
The context in which verse 25 was referenced by my friend had to do with all the years he spent apart from Christ. And I think this whole book so vividly portrays the pattern of turning from God (or never knowing Him) and then returning. Whether we think of the excesses of our youth, the slavery of addictions, the sins of omission, shameful acts and thoughts, slavery to sin of any kind, that kind of life could be compared to the locust swarm. In the end we are devastated, barren, empty, spent. . . and then in steps God. He opens his arms and welcomes us. Even though we ignored him, defied him, scorned and cursed him.
God does restore those years. No, we can’t go back in time and relive them – the way we wish we had in the first place. But he uses the hurt, the pain, the grief, the remorse, and even the lessons learned, to reshape us, we have been through the refiner’s fire, and now we are new creatures. We can use our past to remind us that we don’t want to go back there! We can find courage and strength, wisdom, and even joy in living life now! Even on our worse day now, could it really ever be as bad as a day in our life without our Lord and Savior?
I think these verses are also about forgiveness. God wants us to be like him. That means we are to demonstrate the same depth and generosity of forgiveness to others in our lives as he has for us. That’s not easy—even after receiving the unfathomable gift of God’s forgiveness! But we have a model now: the years the locusts have consumed vs the rest of our lives in God’s family. I have some growing to do, because I struggle with true, genuine, absolute forgiveness. And I know God wants me to reflect upon those locust-eaten, desolate years in my own life, when I determine how much and how often I will forgive others.
I hope today you rend your heart and thank God for the years he has paid back to you. And that you will never again be put to shame, because the Lord is your God and there is none else.
Mary
