mrcrowder.com
What happens when God gets tired of saying “wake up! pay attention!”? What does he say next? When this happened with the people of Israel, God used the prophet Joel to convey his message that time, after time, after time he had been warning them of what would happen if they didn’t pay attention. What does it look like for God to say “I told you so”? Hear this, you elders; What the cutting locust left, Awake, you drunkards, and weep, Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; Don’t get caught up too deep in specifics like locusts, lion’s teeth and wine (this isn’t a diatribe against alcohol, even if you’ve heard someone pull that out of context): Joel is laying the smack down. When we forget God, hope dwindles. When we turn our back on God, do we expect things to get better or worse? Joel has an answer of what happens.
give ear, all inhabitants of the land!
Has such a thing happened in your days,
or in the days of your fathers?
Tell your children of it,
and let your children tell their children,
and their children to another generation.
the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left,
the destroying locust has eaten.
and wail, all you drinkers of wine,
because of the sweet wine,
for it is cut off from your mouth.
For a nation has come up against my land,
powerful and beyond number;
its teeth are lions’ teeth,
and it has the fangs of a lioness.
It has laid waste my vine
and splintered my fig tree;
it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;
their branches are made white.
for the bridegroom of her youth.
The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off
from the house of the Lord.
The priests mourn,
the ministers of the Lord.
The fields are destroyed,
the ground mourns,
because the grain is destroyed,
the wine dries up,
the oil languishes.
wail, O vinedressers,
for the wheat and the barley,
because the harvest of the field has perished.
The vine dries up;
the fig tree languishes.
Pomegranate, palm, and apple,
all the trees of the field are dried up,
and gladness dries up
from the children of man.
Joel 1. 1-12
