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The Benefits of a Bad Year — Joel 2:13
Jack Klumpenhower
1/4/2010
I usually enter each new year hoping for better times. Most often, the outgoing year has been tough in some way. This year, economic stress hit more people than usual. Many are in serious financial trouble. And even if you were spared, you may have had to deal with death or divorce or some other heart-rending sadness.
So I pray for a better year. I hope yours will be full of blessings. But before we forget the old year, I also think we should listen to the prophet Joel. His short book in the Old Testament came on the heels of a particularly bad year.
Joel’s message
God’s people had just had their land ravaged by locusts. Such swarms were common in the ancient Near East, but Joel describes this one as extra severe. No crops were left. In a subsistence farming society, this was an economic disaster far worse than any I’ve known.
Joel aches for the people and cries to God for help, but he also sees a lesson in the locusts. He never claims they’re God’s direct judgment for sin. But he says they’re an opportunity to remember that ultimate judgment is coming. He calls this coming judgment the day of the Lord, and uses locust imagery to describe its terror. Imagine an army of giant, chomping, unstoppable insects: “The day of the Lord is an awesome, terrible thing. Who can possibly survive?” (Joel 2:11, NLT).
This sets up the application in Joel’s message—that the people should use the hard times as an occasion to repent:
“Don’t tear your clothing in your grief,
but tear your hearts instead.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is merciful and compassionate,
Slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
He is eager to relent and not punish.” ( Joel 2:13, NLT)
Joel has probably seen torn clothing on people driven to despair by the locusts. Ever the opportunist, he invites them to tear their hearts before God.
Joel’s hope
I don’t know if it’s irony or faith that we Americans keep printing “In God We Trust” on our money. Most of us actually trust the money more, as long as we have some. Often it takes losing what we rely on to get us to turn to God. Tough times wake us up. Joel is banking on grief to bring the people to their senses—to help them see there’s nothing stable in this world but God, and God’s business is judgment.
That may seem like a harsh message to give in hard times. But God truly is our only dependable hope considering the awful ills of this world. There’s no other escape from death and ultimate sadness.
This makes the second half of Joel 2:13 amazing. Since God is our only hope, he could be oppressive if he wanted to be. But he’s merciful and compassionate. He’s filled, Joel says, with that quality the Hebrew Scriptures remind us of again and again—“unfailing love.” We have every reason to gladly tear our hearts and be joyful in repentance.
Joel’s question
Is repentance still hard for you? Let me try to help. Let me remind you of something.
There actually is one person who had no need to fear the terror of the day of the Lord. There’s one who had no sin to tear his heart over, one for whom the sadness of this world could have remained distant.
But he came to us. He carried our sorrows and felt our grief. He gave himself over to death. He was stretched out and torn open. And on the cross that judgment of God—the terrible day of the Lord—came down on him. “Who can possibly survive it?” Joel asked. Well, we can. We can survive judgment, outlive death and one day be rid of all sorrow because in these things Jesus took our place.
This is the message that tears open hard hearts and brings repentance. And if by chance the hardships of the past year have helped you see it, I would say it hasn’t been such a bad year after all.
Jack Klumpenhower is a writer and communications consultant living in Colorado. He has authored Bible study lessons and a family devotional guide.
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