Thoughts for the Day

Call to Repentance and Prayer

Sanctify a fast,
call a solemn assembly.
Gather the elders
and all the inhabitants of the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
and cry out to the Lord.

Alas for the day!
For the day of the Lord is near,
and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.
Is not the food cut off
before our eyes,
joy and gladness
from the house of our God?

The seed shrivels under the clods,
the storehouses are desolate;
the granaries are ruined
because the grain has failed.
How the animals groan!
The herds of cattle wander about
because there is no pasture for them;
even the flocks of sheep are dazed....

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!

(Lectionary, New Revised Standard Version)

Thoughts

If you're old enough you may remember the scorching temperatures of 1976 in the UK, when reservoirs dried up and people were forced to queue to use standipes to get drinking water. You may also remember the plague of hungry seven-spotted ladybirds that year! They were absolutely everywhere in enormous numbers. I now no longer saw them as interesting characters in children's story books, or helpful foragers of greenflies, they were a really horrible menace. Well plagues of ladybirds are no real comparison to plagues of locusts that eat everything, but it's probably the nearest we in the west have got to a plague of insects

Our reading today is from the book of Joel. the second of the twelve books that we call 'The Minor Prophets'. We know nothing about Joel except his and his father's name, but he might have lived while the Second Temple existed built after the Hebrews returned from Babylon, for his writing reflects the worship in the Temple at that time. Joel tells us that the 'word of the Lord' came to him, and that he called for a time of repentance. There has been a terrible plague of locusts, which have eaten all the food. Joel sees this as sent by God to warn of the approach of the 'Day of the Lord', that is the time when there will be a period of upheaval when God will intervene in history and will judge its people.

With pandemics, global warming, and war* in our world, we may also wonder if God is calling us also to repentance.

* There are 13 major conflicts in the world, including Ukraine-Russia, and Israel-Hamas, as well as 32 other conflicts in the world many involving extremist groups..

Lord God,
sometimes social media and our televisions
bombarded us with negative news about pandemics,
global warming and wars.
Help us not to get hardened to the news,
but see the bigger picture
of lives affected by these tragedies.
Joel saw this as the period leading to the day
when You would intervene to judge the world.
May his call to repentance be heard by us
and may we be ready to own up to our mistakes.
Amen.