God Restores What We Thought was Lost

"Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice for the Lord has done great things! 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. 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."- Joel 2:21, 25-26 [RSV]

I think these verses are so beautiful and full of hope and peace of mind, it kind of makes me take a deep, cleansing breath every time I read them. How much our God loves us! Not only will he forgive us our past sins, he will restore what was lost! We may not have those years back, but we will have a right relationship with Him as if we never strayed or defied or sinned. Wow. And we will live abundantly at that!

As I think of my own redemption story, and listen to others begin to unfold theirs, this is the one verse that comes to mind. One of my dear friends told me a couple of years ago that this is "his passage." It resonates with him because he said he does look back with regret on the years he was not in a right relationship with God. It resonates with me too. And, I imagine with all of us. We all have times in our lives that were dark, and empty, stripped of joy and feeling lost and alone. We didn't know through it all that God was there. We didn't feel Him, but He was there. He was just waiting to tell us He restores what the locust has eaten.

Locusts are frightening to farmers, because of their ability to wipe out every green thing in their path. They are specialized, too: "the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter". Some of them eat the seeds, some the stalks, etc. And they invade a crop or a field of grass like an invading army. The once green pasture appears to turn black because of the massive numbers blanketing their prey. They destroy everything in their wake - down to the dirt - nothing is left when they have finished. They are fast and efficient due to their massive numbers. The world feels that way sometimes, too. We are bombarded with so many messages-it's hard to drown them out and shut them off in order to just rest in God.

The other topic that is addressed in this passage is the vastness of God. We humans think so small! God is so very big that we can't even comprehend it! That's what God is saying in these verses from Joel I think. "I am big enough to restore you to a right relationship - because I am God. Don't worry about the past. Don't fret about the future. Rest in me . . . right now . . . in this moment. Trust that I will keep my word. And should you stray again, I will wait for you. Because I am eternal and time doesn't have the same meaning to me as it does for you."

I'm so glad I worship a huge, tremendous, vast and limitless God! Some days I really need that assurance. And the locust has eaten away a great deal of "who I could have been" and "what I could have done." God reassures us that He will make today even better than any yesterday we can imagine might have been. Today we are His. He has claimed us and He will sustain us. So rest in God; and rejoice that he restores the years the locust has eaten.