Joel, prophet

He seems to fill up the office, his height and stockiness filing up the space. He asks for directions for the Care Center and details. “I’ve never had to ask for help before,” he adds. “I just lost my job.” His story is one I hear often…. Inquiries about help and then litanies of why it’s needed. Human pride wants to explain. However, he adds something that I have not yet heard—“But God is with me. When I’m on the other side of this trouble, when I get a job, I’ll see why he let it happen.”

He has faith that dwarfs his stature. He has eyes of faith that sees past his personal disaster and sees the providential hand of God. He saw that even in the “disasters” the Lord is advancing his purposes of redemption.

Joel, prophet, too, had eyes of faith. He sees a national disaster come sweeping. He fellow countrymen bemoaned and turned pale. They saw it as a “mere” disaster, something that the natural forces of the world has stirred. But Joel saw something they didn’t see—“My people!” he cries. “This is the Lord’s army. This is the Lord’s doing. He is calling for repentance. We have a choice. We are faced with a disaster. Where are we going to turn?”

“To you, O LORD, I call, for fire has devoured the open pastures and flames have burned up the trees of the field” (1:19).

For this man standing in my office, his job loss probably wasn’t a call to repent. But he was faced with a choice: faith or fear; dependence on God or himself; praising God or cursing God.

He chose faith; a faith that saw the Lord as the God of history who controls jobs and governments and economies and his own life. It was a faith that saw a good God even in the shreds that remained. His simple words resounded like a prophet: Will we accept the good as well as the bad? Do we see God’s hand? Or do we believe that God is in the good and then somehow absent when the bad comes? This man’s eyes of his heart saw the Lord who “is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love” (Joel 2:13) even when the rose-colored glasses were tucked away in a drawer, folded up in lost dreams and shattered hopes.

“’Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?’ In all this, Job did not sin in what he said” (Job 2:10).

The eyes of his heart were opened to see God with Him, Immanuel. God was not absent. He saw the Lord who had become man and walked this earth, who knew poverty, who did not even have a place to lay his head. He saw the Lord who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all; he trusted this God to graciously, along with him, give him all things (Rom. 8:31-32). He saw the Lord who suffered for and suffers with his people (Heb. 2:17-18; Heb. 4:15-16). It was in the presence of the Lord that he found his comfort. Immanuel.

So, too, did Joel see past his circumstances, seeing the locusts as the Lord’s army as part of the fearful Day of the Lord. He did not let that daunt him, but relied on what he knew of God—the good, loving, compassionate and long-suffering God, but who did anger and did carry out justice. God’s warnings of judgment were not for judgment’s sake alone—it was a call for salvation, part of his redemptive purposes. The Lord yet offered a change for his people to respond with eyes of faith, with a true heart. Then once again the presence of the Lord would dwell with them. Looking to the Lord with eyes of faith, we can see the world and historical events from God’s eyes. We can see the God of history working for redemption; the God who is in this world with us. We learn more of who he is, and it is his presence that gives us peace.

“Then you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the LORD your God, and that there is no other” (Joel 2:27).