Rend your hearts not your garments.
It wasn’t just the bite of the cat when she thought I was ignoring her and running away this morning, I really wasn’t, I also actually DREAMED about her nip on my elbow, waking me up, and knew the reminder to get back to Joel the prophet, and my reading and writing. I am now in the last slim sections of the old testament, prophets abound with advanced advice. It is given with an wrap up punch. Lots of history. But compared to forever, a small slice of situational severity.
Yeah, there’s something to be said completing the reading of the Bible, I’m ALMOST there, filling my knowledge gap in these 10 years into my awakening. It wasn’t about a Bible rapidness, devotions devoured, but devotion newly discovered. My journey and likely yours too, has been page by page prodding by the Lord to absorb knowledge of Him and how He expresses His love to us. I bet the timing to finish these chapters is no accident. It’s a decade of devotion writing. I am reminded that the Lord has been devoted to us from before He began the universe. Jesus already set to save. The harvest now holding on for collection.
No wonder with this much devotion from the Lord, He had and has lessons to teach, waywards to warn and regroup. The old testament plights are for those to beg to not go back there in waywardness.
I heard that Joel the prophet’s writing could be applied for many stages of the plight of the wayward Israelites and Judah-ites who weren’t devoted as they could be, then devoured by exile to Babylon, escape to Egypt, and all generations in wandering plight in the punishment of their wayward ways. There were constant reminders to follow God in prescribed sacrifice and devotion, the promise of prosperity, but their worship of false idols prevailed and distracted them.
We all need to focus on the gifts over the gripes.
Halloween 31OCT is today, there is surely more fun than fright. They have parades not plight. But pockets of false idols and evil creep in, like excessive sugar pouncing unsuspecting souls. There are moments we fail to pay attention to each other, an evil of self-indulgence. There are idol-worship times of “keeping up with the neighbors” getting bigger and bigger yard displays, Halloween AND Christmas. It is SO GOOD to have Thanksgiving with simple thankfulness in the middle.
So we know there are ignorant times where we forget to count our blessings, not remembering that the Lord does want us to FOCUS on the future WITH HIM, step by step now, one day, one moment at a time, and not get bogged down by today’s pressures. We forget about our fortunes and surely our forgiveness in the Lord and start to fight each other where we should be forging ahead for the sake of others yet to hear.
We need to be teaching preaching reaching at a faster pace than the locust can devour a crop of people behind us. The scripture reminder is of the losses, the scripture prophecy is for and of the day of the Lord coming back too. Rend your hearts, see His sacrifice, know His Salvation.
Therefore let us stoke up the Holy Spirit fire of faith and keep going… Look for the Lord to lead the Way. Keep walking faster than those locusts.
Amen
“Return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm.“
Amen
—
Joel 1, Joel 2:1-13
The Locust Plague in Judah
The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
The Land Laid Waste
Hear this, you elders,
And give ear, all you inhabitants of the land!
Has anything like this happened in your days,
Or even in the days of your fathers?
Tell your children about it,
Let your children tell their children,
And their children another generation.
What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten;
What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten;
And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten.
Awake, you drunkards, and weep;
And wail, all you drinkers of wine,
Because of the new wine,
For it has been cut off from your mouth.
For a nation has come up against My land,
Strong, and without number;
His teeth are the teeth of a lion,
And he has the fangs of a fierce lion.
He has laid waste My vine,
And ruined My fig tree;
He has stripped it bare and thrown it away;
Its branches are made white.
Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth
For the husband of her youth.
The grain offering and the drink offering
Have been cut off from the house of the Lord;
The priests mourn, who minister to the Lord.
The field is wasted,
The land mourns;
For the grain is ruined,
The new wine is dried up,
The oil fails.
Be ashamed, you farmers,
Wail, you vinedressers,
For the wheat and the barley;
Because the harvest of the field has perished.
The vine has dried up,
And the fig tree has withered;
The pomegranate tree,
The palm tree also,
And the apple tree—
All the trees of the field are withered;
Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men.
Mourning for the Land
Gird yourselves and lament, you priests;
Wail, you who minister before the altar;
Come, lie all night in sackcloth,
You who minister to my God;
For the grain offering and the drink offering
Are withheld from the house of your God.
Consecrate a fast,
Call a sacred assembly;
Gather the elders
And all the inhabitants of the land
Into the house of the Lord your God,
And cry out to the Lord.
Alas for the day!
For the day of the Lord is at hand;
It shall come as destruction from the Almighty.
Is not the food cut off before our eyes,
Joy and gladness from the house of our God?
The seed shrivels under the clods,
Storehouses are in shambles;
Barns are broken down,
For the grain has withered.
How the animals groan!
The herds of cattle are restless,
Because they have no pasture;
Even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment.
O Lord, to You I cry out;
For fire has devoured the open pastures,
And a flame has burned all the trees of the field.
The beasts of the field also cry out to You,
For the water brooks are dried up,
And fire has devoured the open pastures.
The Day of the Lord
Chapter 2
Blow the trumpet in Zion,
And sound an alarm in My holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble;
For the day of the Lord is coming,
For it is at hand:
A day of darkness and gloominess,
A day of clouds and thick darkness,
Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains.
A people come, great and strong,
The like of whom has never been;
Nor will there ever be any such after them,
Even for many successive generations.
A fire devours before them,
And behind them a flame burns;
The land is like the Garden of Eden before them,
And behind them a desolate wilderness;
Surely nothing shall escape them.
Their appearance is like the appearance of horses;
And like swift steeds, so they run.
With a noise like chariots
Over mountaintops they leap,
Like the noise of a flaming fire that devours the stubble,
Like a strong people set in battle array.
Before them the people writhe in pain;
All faces are drained of color.
They run like mighty men,
They climb the wall like men of war;
Every one marches in formation,
And they do not break ranks.
They do not push one another;
Every one marches in his own column.
Though they lunge between the weapons,
They are not cut down.
They run to and fro in the city,
They run on the wall;
They climb into the houses,
They enter at the windows like a thief.
The earth quakes before them,
The heavens tremble;
The sun and moon grow dark,
And the stars diminish their brightness.
The Lord gives voice before His army,
For His camp is very great;
For strong is the One who executes His word.
For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible;
Who can endure it?
A Call to Repentance
“Now, therefore,” says the Lord,
“Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm.
Debbie Upper 