“And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.”Joel 2:25 (KJV)
A promise made to people whose loss was partly their own doing.
Years, not days. Joel is speaking to a people who had watched season after season stripped bare, and some of that devastation had followed their own turning away.
God does not pretend the years were not lost. He promises restoration, which is a different and better thing than pretending.
Restoration rarely looks like getting the identical thing back. It looks like God building something out of the ground that was stripped. Do not despise the shape it takes because it is not the shape you lost.
A prayer to close
Lord, You know exactly what those years cost. Restore what the locust has eaten, in whatever form You choose, and help me to receive it. Amen.
