God Will Restore

There's nothing like the Word of God to catch you off guard and stop you dead in your tracks.

Anyone who has read my latest post knows that I've been going through a trying time.  It's not necessary to air out dirty laundry, or rehash details of the past, at least not at this point in time; but to give a little background, to set the stage of what happened this morning, I will share a portion of my struggles in a little more detail.

God has given me a clear vision of what my life, and that of my family, is supposed to look like.  He has promised me a "Promised land" or His design.  That vision includes specific details about employment, finances (debt), priorities, time management, just everything that you can imagine about the future.  God has been teaching me, correcting me, transforming me and renewing my mind about everything from education to finances, from being a Godly wife and mother to serving in the community.   There are so many goals to accomplish, so many purposes to pursue as God unfolds the time and place for them.  There is a definite "place to be" and a list of things that we need to accomplish.  These things require discipline on our parts, they require an active pursuit of God's best, of opportunities to serve and obey.  

But, the last few years circumstances beyond my control of have led my family off the path to the "Promised Land" and have led us into the wilderness.  Poor choices, bad leadership, spiritual weakness, and disobedience have all played a part in the destruction that I feel has fallen on us.  We are living within the consequences of all of it.  It shakes me, frightens me, to think of how long we must wander the wilderness...

I think daily about where we could be if...where we would be if only...

We should be enjoying the milk and honey, the rest that comes from being in the center of God's will.  The peace of obedience should be filling this family, this home.   But instead, we are miles away in the opposite direction.  We have so much ground to make up, so much time lost.   Years and years of accomplishment, or potential, wasted and gone.  We were at the cusp of the future and now we're lost. 

When I dwell on it, it feels like a field hard fought for, prepared by the sweat of our brow, seeded with good intentions, hopes, dreams...a field that, before it had a chance to bear fruit, was ravaged by locusts.  Everything lost.   Hope          well, hope for the future somewhere distant, maybe, but no where in sight.  

A starving time is anticipated.  Dreaded.  

But then...I am struck by God's truth.  A promise I never knew promised.   

As I read blog post after blog post on a site that has become something of a "support group" for me lately, one of the writers randomly interjected a verse from the book of Joel.  (Who reads Joel, memorizes Joel, and quotes Joel anyway?) 

The verse said this:  "God will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten." Joel 2:25 

blink.  blink.  

I had lost hope.  I had lost sight of God as the restorer.   Frankly, I had come to expect that the earth may just open and swallow my family.  Dramatic, I know.  I feared forty years of wilderness wandering, I feared famine.  

But God said to me this morning, "I WILL RESTORE THE YEARS THE LOCUSTS HAVE EATEN"!

The locusts had in fact eaten the crops we spent years preparing for and planting, as a consequence of the idolatry and disobedience, just as it happened to God's people in the days of Joel.  Yes, we are living under the chastising hand of our Father, and yes I am just as guilty in my response to the circumstances beyond my control as the one responsible for the circumstances is...in my anger, resentment, and bitterness, I have sinned too.  

Correction hurts.   It's painful not just for the guilty, but for everyone involved.   The spouses, the children, the church, the friends, the community...we are not islands unto ourselves.  Instead of doing the things we could have been doing, serving in ways we could have been, we are healing and relearning, regrowing and waiting. Let us therefore be sober minded and redeem the time.

But let us not in despair forget that repentance will bring us restoration of whatever is lost.  Whether it is trust, money, time, opportunities...whatever is lost, whatever consequence results from our sin and disobedience to God's call and loving instruction, it can be restored.   He promised!