Through the prophet Joel, the Lord tells us that if we return to Him “with fasting, weeping, and mourning” that He will relent in punishment and have pity on His people. God even goes so far as to say that He will restore everything that the locust has eaten (Joel 2:25-32).
So what have “locusts” eaten in our lives? What sorrows have occurred that have left us bruised and broken? What hardships and tragedies have seemed to have decimated the landscape of our lives? Maybe disappointments have crashed in and dashed our hopes for happiness and fulfillment. Wounded from the battles of life, our strength may be so frail and flimsy that we are on the brink of despair.
All of these things may have happened to us, but they are not the last word. We turn to God, who has promised to restore the years that we have known heartache and misfortune.
How does God do this? Well, no one knows the mind of God, but we do know that “nothing will be impossible for God” (Luke 1:37).
“There is no time with God; a thousand years, a single day, it is all one” (2 Peter 3:8). Everything is present tense with God. So through this mystery, we can ask God in prayer to heal and to restore any situations in our lives that need God’s merciful, loving touch – no matter when they happened.
We can count on God to bring good out of evil and to love us into wholeness. Restoration, after all, is His specialty!
Patricia J. Hennessy is a member of St. Gabriel Church in Charlotte.