Swarming Destruction

      Hear this, you elders; 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. What the cutting locust left, 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. Awake, you drunkards, and weep, 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. Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth 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. Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; 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 1:2–12
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Swarming Destruction
For those living in the prophet Joel’s day, nothing was more feared than the locust swarm. Seemingly coming out of nowhere they would blacken the sky, as millions upon millions of locusts would ravage the land. Eating and destroying all plant life in their path. Nothing would be saved, and famine and starvation would be the only thing left in their path. In these opening verses, God directs Joel to warn the people of Judah that the Lord’s judgment for their sins was coming. Wave after wave of locust swarms would come and devastate their land. These words are not just merely for the people of Joel’s day, but for us as well. We do well to remember that when we walk the sinful path of Joel’s generation when we turn from His Word and truth God’s wrath awaits. Yet God does not leave us without hope, without salvation. In repentance, we are strengthened by God’s promise of mercy, and that His mercy is greater than any disaster. His grace, received through the Word and Sacraments, restores us and gives life. Even when every earthly blessing is cut off from us, there remains an eternal gift that atones for our unrighteousness, the spotless Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. And it is for His sake, we are forgiven and restored to holiness.