From today’s reading...
Priests, put on sackcloth and lament! You ministers of the altar, wail! Come here, lie in sackcloth all night long, you ministers of my God! For the Temple of your God has been deprived of cereal offering and libation.” Joel 1:13
Cause and effect.
The Jews of Joel’s time took YOLO and FOMO a little too far.
They turned into “drunkards” and “wine bibbers” (v5). Thus they took their eyes off the prize, i.e., God.
As a result, they lost their crops and were invaded by a brutal nation that “reduced my vines to a desolation and my fig trees to splinters, stripped them and broken them down, leaving their branches white” (v7).
Today’s reading picks up after Joel has rubbed their noses in their punishments because God sent him to help turn this crowd around.
Yes, it might sound frightening at first, but understand the purpose of today’s reading, of Joel, and the entire Bible, namely, they have been given to us to show us how to live, the price we will pay if we do not live right, and how to get back on track and live rightly when we wander off the straight and narrow.
Give God your best, your first fruits, and everything else you have because He will take what you give and return it to you 100-fold.
So trust Him and give completely, which is the only way to...
Stay the course.
Keep the faith.
Endure.
Now go sell something.