Locusts and the years

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I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten... - Joel 2:25
I chanced upon this verse while reading a new acquired book by the name of 'Beyond Boundaries'. Just caught on to this verse and began to wonder what are the things that locusts have eaten. I realised for a moment that things that the locusts have eaten are often gone to waste. Just watch a video on Youtube and one will see the pestilence of locusts in agriculture.

So the years the locusts have eaten are a great deal. In human eyes, the years are wasted. The times are lost. And yet God said, 'I will repay you...'. A promise from God about restoring lost times. Just make me wonder about the lost years wasted before I came to know Him. I guess this must be something in everyone's mind, "why haven't I come to know the Lord earlier?" and "things would have been different".

But God will restore those years. I must say that the past years since I came to know Him have been more eventful and fulfilling than the earlier years. And indeed, He came so that we can live life to the fullest. He is indeed restoring the years the locusts have eaten in my life. In this respect, shall I not be grateful and give thanks to Him?

This of course brings to the question why some people can be so disillusioned about the years they spent with God. There are many reasons and it is not my intention here to start another Ravi Zacharias book on Has Christianity failed us but I just want to point out some facts. A lot of times, when we say we spend time with God, we are actually spending time with people and we need to ask ourselves why are we doing these things. Because simply serving God invokes a cost on our lives. As Wenjiang preached some weeks back, do we learn to spend useless time with God? Can we make sense of what is being restored and what is not? Is it other people's fault or do we fail to look into ourselves?

Locusts. The years. All but will gone with the wind. The Lord will restore the years. Yet how many people are willing to wait and see the fruits of restoration?


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