Gird Yourselves And Lament

I) In Joel 1:1-3, God through His prophet addresses a people faced with absolute calamity.

A) He asks, “Has anything like this happened in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?” (NKJV). He says that the nation faces a crisis greater than any seen in generations (“or even in the days of your fathers?”), a crisis so great that they will be speaking of it for generations to come. (“Let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.”)

Verses 4-12 describe the disaster that has come upon the nation – a plague of locusts. Living in America, it is hard for us to imagine the scope of a locust plague. Just last year (2020), East Africa saw swarms of locusts the size of major cities, with each swarm containing hundreds of billions of locusts. These swarms can be so dense as to literally darken the sky, and to completely engulf everything on the ground. Though locust swarms can be large enough to encompass entire countries, a swarm that is merely a single square mile in size can eat as much food in a single day as 100,000 people.

Locust swarms are not uncommon in the Mideast, but Joel portrays the plague in his day as far worse than the common swarms. He describes a land completely destroyed as by another nation (1:6), with every crop and every bit of vegetation consumed: grapes, olives, figs, wheat. Even the bark is stripped from the trees (1:7, “made white”). Imagine how devastating this would be, with the nation losing all of its food, unable to feed either livestock or people. They could look forward to mass starvation and disease. It would seem as if life as they knew it was gone, and to a large extent that would be the case.

B) Though we are unlikely to ever encounter a locust plague ourselves, each of us will suffer tragedy in our lives that will leave us reeling and feeling as desolate and hopeless as did Judah in the days of Joel. It may be when we have serious illness or death in our family. It may be when we suffer major financial setbacks. It may be when others act toward us with callousness or even hatred or severely disappoint us. It may be war or a natural disaster. Whatever the cause, it will seem hopeless, as if life as we know it cannot possibly go on. As Joel addresses Judah, God gives us a pattern as to how we can face such disasters in our own lives.

II) Mourn

A) Joel tells the people in 1:8 to mourn with the most intense sort of mourning, like a young bride who is widowed, perhaps even having to don the sackcloth of mourning before even having a chance to wear her wedding dress. He goes on to observe that the entire nation is in mourning:1:9 the priests, 1:10 the land, 1:11 the farmers and vinedressers, and 1:12 all of mankind (“the sons of men”). Having observed that all are in mourning, Joel 1:13 enjoins the priests to continue doing just that.

B) Grief is a natural response to calamity and is not a response that we should try to suppress. On the surface, grief may seem to be inconsistent with faith. After all, don’t we truly believe that we have an eternal life of joy ahead of us, making the things of this world almost irrelevant? But as Solomon observes in Eccl 3:1 that “To everything is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven,” he goes on in verse 4 to say, “A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (NKJV). Weeping and mourning is every bit as much a part of this world and of ourselves as is laughing.

C) Even Jesus wept tears of grief. In Jn 11 we find the account of how Jesus hears of the serious illness of His friend Lazarus, then delays going to him for days, ultimately telling His disciples that He is going to raise Lazarus from the dead. He arrives to find that Lazarus has already been buried for four days. He encounters first Martha and then Mary, sisters of Lazarus, who each in turn observe aloud that if Jesus had arrived earlier, their brother would not have died. In Jn 11:33 we find Jesus “groan[ing] in the spirit and … troubled,” moved to compassion for Mary and the weeping Jews that are with her, but also undoubtedly sorrowful that His actions in delaying (allowing Lazarus to die so that He could raise him) have caused Mary and the others to endure such pain. And in Jn 11:35 is the simple statement, “Jesus wept.”

Even knowing that He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, Jesus Himself grieved to see the anguish that the others were suffering and to know that He could have prevented that suffering. Yes, Jesus wept tears of compassion, but I believe that the text suggests that He wept tears of personal grief as well. He was about to bring great joy, but still grieved it had been necessary to allow the others to suffer pain. If Jesus could suffer grief, even knowing what joy was coming, certainly we do not need to try to suppress our own grief.