“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.” (Joel 2:25, NIV)
I don’t ever want to be a golf course superintendent. It’s too high on the list of thankless jobs. Golfers want pristine conditions all the time. To get this at home, they’d have to have someone come in and glue leaves on their trees.
Golf courses are living things, which means they are fickle and sensitive, susceptible at times to the slightest of errors. But when the mistakes are big, they can cost a superintendent the job.
This happened not long ago at a club in our area. The late summer application of seasonal treatment was too strong or too wrong. In a matter of days, the greens were dead. All of them. If that feels like a punch in your gut, you know what it felt like to the superintendent, the staff, and the board. They all suffered through hours of red-hot questions. This kind of mistake just cannot be made. But it was, and the course was shut down for weeks. Now it is only in play with temporary greens.
God’s people had turned their hearts from him, and he used a firm hand to pull them back. But that firm hand was attached to a loving arm and a Father’s heart.The prophet Joel, whose little book we find in the Old Testament, spoke to God’s people at a time when all that was green around them was gobbled by locusts. It was a metaphor of the Babylonian invasion, but the stripping was real. All they called community, much they called life, had been taken away. They lived in despair, most of them in exile, with faint hope that they would ever recover.
Into these circumstances, Joel spoke the words of God. His prophecy must have struck a chord of possibility among his contemporaries. In exile, in poverty, all they had was gone and they were playing temporary greens. At least that’s what they hoped. And now they had the words of recovery: “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.”
God had sent the locusts, and with good reason. His people had turned their hearts from him, and he used a firm hand to pull them back. But that firm hand was attached to a loving arm and a Father’s heart. This would not be their end. Their end would be life—Holy Spirit life!
Where are you now? In a place of desperation? Does it feel as though the locusts have eaten all you had? If so, God probably has your attention more than ever. You may be shaking a fist at him, but he has your attention. And he wants you to know: if you are willing to be drawn to him, there is life on the other side. Not temporary greens. The real thing. Big, broad, verdant green. He has poured out his Spirit on all people. If you will receive him, he will pour out his Spirit on you.
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Jeff Hopper
November 20, 2019
Copyright 2019 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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