Post from June 30, 2023

“👟 RSD 1158 ✅ Today Verse: “Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity.” — Joel 2:13 (1+1=2:5+8=13)

The Message translation: “Change your life, not just your clothes. Come back to God, your God. And here’s why: God is kind and merciful. He takes a deep breath, puts up with a lot. This most patient God, extravagant in love, always ready to cancel catastrophe. Who knows? Maybe He’ll do it now, maybe He’ll turn around and show pity. Maybe, when all’s said and done, there’ll be blessings full and robust for your God!”

Do you ever look around and just go, “ehh”? I’m sure most of y’all have seen this in meme form. You know, it’ll mention something about depression or something bad going on in the world (or really anything in 2020), and the main point would be something akin to, “Why do you think this poll suggests that most people don’t see themselves as optimistic?” And, the answer is, “Me: gestures broadly at everything,” meaning that the perspective of the world generally being “on fire,” so to speak, is the understood position of the modern human condition; it’s literally an entire class of meme (popular internet posts). So, do you ever scroll through FB or turn on the news and just go, SIGH. I mean, how could you not? Some politician got in trouble for something while one got away with something else. There’s an earthquake. There’s a wildfire. There’s a heat wave. There’s a flood. “This is bad for (the planet, health, education…take your pic).” “No, that isn’t bad for the (insert whatever here), but this other thing is.” “No, that other thing is actually bad, but the good news is the first thing isn’t as bad.” “Well no, that second thing is actually beneficial, but only if you accomplish this the first Thursday of every other month and the second Tuesday of every other month, but not the same month as the first Thursday, but the thing must be done before the third Monday regardless, but that’s every third month; otherwise, it’s worse than the first thing we said was bad.” Did anyone keep up with all of that? Well good for you if you did, because I got lost just writing it. Flip the channel. Crime is up. Unemployment is up. Then, another network shows unemployment is down, crime is down. The studies show _____. The studies show the opposite of _____. “BUT THE STUDIES SHOWED ______—HOW CAN THEY SHOW _____ IF THE OTHER ONE SHOWED _____?!?!” Let me tell y’all something: if I gave a statistics lesson on many of these studies, you’d be really disappointed. How can we not look around and go, “ehh”? It seems like it’s almost required of any thinking person.

In today’s verse, the prophet Joel was reflecting on the same sort of things. Granted, Joel didn’t have TV or internet, but let’s just say there was enough war, famine, and general unrest in his own backyard to where he could obtain a pretty clear picture of, shall we say, “areas of needed improvement” in the world. I reread the Book of Joel this afternoon, and part of my commentary is this: what a bummer. There’s even this whole thing about mourning for crops lost, etc—“Even the wild animals pant for You” (Joel 1:20). The people of Judah (think Israelites—they were in between kingdoms at the time) were, as we would say, going through it. “Surely, the people’s joy is withered away” (Joel 1:12). Some of this was the general misfortune that we find in an imperfect world and some of it was consequences of human actions. See, Joel was a prophet—we’ve talked about Isaiah and Jeremiah, the people chosen to give a “heads up” to everyone about what’s coming or what could happen if people didn’t flip the script. See, when people go into selfish/greedy mode, they don’t make the best decisions and set themselves up for generally not good situations. So, the prophets would help them know how to get back on track. Remember Jeremiah who had given this advice then had to give some bad news after an overwhelming majority of people didn’t vibe with it? I mean: he tried for YEARS. Joel was doing two things here. He was informing people that some of this bad stuff was the trajectory that they were currently on (consequences of actions), and he was giving a heads up that changing some things around would lead to better days.

Basically, leading lives of greed, selfishness, anger, indifference, etc. leads to generally unfavorable situations whereas trying your best to keep things like kindness, generosity, forgiveness, and love at the forefront of your actions leads you to living your best life. God wants this for all of us, so what were the people of Judah supposed to do? That’s the advice Joel is giving in today’s verse. “Hey, we need to do better at being humans.” Some background: in Joel’s day, tearing clothing as lamentation was a thing, so that’s part of what the first part of today’s verse means. Joel is saying, “Don’t just tear your clothes to say sorry; change what you’re holding in importance.” Joel knew that following this advice would lead them to back to valuing things like love and kindness in their everyday lives and would lead them back to God. See, God knows everything (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent), but the thing that the people of Judah forgot (and we do too) is the omnibenevolent part. God lets us know what the best way to go is if we seek His guidance and do our best to follow. God wants us to live our best lives. So, what about the calamities we see all over the news? Well, some things are general misfortune (where we need to stick to our faith and stick together), and some things are consequences of human actions. By focusing on the latter, we can do our part to make our world the best that it can be. I know it sounds cheesy, but a little shift in perspective and action…and heart can be a catalyst for good to come into our communities and give us a much better argument for optimism. You know: when things are a lot, try God.

Joel lined out how to do just that in today’s verse. “If you want God’s help, you need to ask for it and show repentance (being really sorry and willing to change) to show that you want Him in our lives.” Joel reminds everyone that God is super understanding with humans and knows we mess up. What He wants is for us to recognize when we are doing wrong and to try to do right instead. I included the Message translation because it’s plain and good advice that we can use in 2023. “Change your life, not just your clothes.” If you weren’t a good human yesterday, don’t get up today and just put today’s shirt over yesterday’s heart. It’s like if you don’t have time to shower after your run but you change out of your sweaty clothes because you have somewhere to be. Yeah, you might smell ok (you have baby wipes, deodorant, and perfume (I guess cologne for guys?)), but are you really clean? Like, you know you’ll be remedying that situation sooner rather than later because all you did was put clean clothes on your post-workout body.

We all have times when we’re not great humans. Maybe you weren’t patient with your spouse today. Maybe you gave a friend a hard time because you were frustrated about something else. Maybe you lied. Maybe you littered. Maybe you purposely cut someone off in traffic. Maybe you were greedy. Maybe someone messed up and you didn’t even try to be gracious. We all get overwhelmed and frustrated and angry and selfish and tempted and do things we’re not proud of. Lamentations 3:22-23 reminds us that our Lord is ready to begin afresh with us each day (really each hour, minute, second). He’s ready to make us new (even multiple times a day, if need-be). So, what do you do? You turn back to God: ask for forgiveness (this also helps you pinpoint what went wrong), and ask for guidance. He’ll help you with things like love and kindness, generosity of spirit. He’ll help you live your best life. Put on that clean shirt over a new heart: it’ll look great on you.”