A Message Left by Grasshoppers

 Joel 1:2-4 (NIV) Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locust have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.

            According to usda.gov fact sheets, during the years 1957 and 1958, a prolonged outbreak of devastating grasshoppers totally demolished 3 million and 4.5 million acres of rangeland respectively along the western coastal states. Estimates of 100 insects per square yard were recorded. (That’s a lot of bugs!) Although the date for the Book of Joel is uncertain, most biblical scholars place it near the times of Hosea and Amos—thus placing Joel some nearly 2,800 years ago. The point being, we clearly understand from current world history the type of devastation to which Joel must have been referring. Total devastation of vegetation down to the bare ground.

            We know the theme of Joel is a call to repentance for judgement is near. Joel uses the devastating problem at hand as a visual parallel to the worldly corruption eating away at God’s people—a people who should have remained faithful. Joel sounds the call to wake up while there is still an opportunity to return to the LORD.

Joel 2:32 (NIV) And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved…

            This verse should be familiar to you for Paul quotes it in his message to the Romans:

Romans 10:13 (NIV) …for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

            The Book of Romans can be dated roughly 700 years after Joel. And thus we come full circle to words tucked inside verse 3:

Joel 1:3 (NIV) Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.

            From Joel’s generation to Paul’s generation; from Paul’s generation to ours; from our generation to future generations; is the message any different? Perhaps the greatest question is this, What are we doing to ensure that future generations will know and understand the urgency of calling upon the name of the Lord for judgement is near?

Gracious Heavenly Father,

            The day of judgement is fast approaching. Just as grasshoppers can strip the vegetation from land, so too we allow worldly values to strip away our resolve to follow you. Forgive our complacency. Renew the responsibility within us to teach future generations both by our words and by our examples. May we be found faithful.

            In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, Amen.

Find Us Faithful by Jon Mohr, 1987

We’re pilgrims on a journey of the narrow road, And those who’ve gone before us  line the way—Cheering on the faithful, encouraging the weary, their lives a stirring testament to God’s sustaining grace.

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run the race not only for the prize, But as those who’ve gone before us, let us leave to those behind us the heritage of faithfulness passed on thro’ godly lives.

After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone, and our children sift thru all we’ve left behind, May the clues that they discover, and the mem’ries they uncover, become the light that leads them to the road we each must find.

O may all who come behind us find us faithful; may the fire of our devotion light their way. May the footprints that we leave lead them to believe, and the lives we live inspire them to obey. O may all who come behind us find us faithful.

 

The devotional A Message Left by Grasshoppers appeared first on Write From My Heart at writefrommyheartblog.blogspot.com

email: Dotty Willmon, writefrommyheartblog@gmail.com