A scroll from Joel: look around!

My name is Joel BenPethuel but you can call me Joel. You won’t have heard me on the radio before, because I lived 2500 years ago. I have my own book and it’s simply called “Joel”. You can find it in the Old Testament part of the Bible. And for these 5x Tuesdays in June, I’m your guest on HCRfm to share with you some of the message God gave me for a time of crisis. We’ll call it “A scroll from Joel”.

I know you guys in Huntingdon in 2020 are going through a hard time, and it’s not easy. You haven’t been able to see your families much, you haven’t been able to live a normal life, and a lot of people have been ill and some have even been dying. I know that some things are returning to normality but there’s still a lot of fear and worry about. People are calling it an unprecedented crisis.

That’s why I think you might be interested to hear my story. Do you know, we also had an unprecedented crisis 2500 years ago when a massive locust plague wiped out all our crops? What God said back then might be something you would be interested to hear right now. Here’s a few words…

“Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors, tell it to your children and let your children tell it to their children and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left, the great locusts have eaten, what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten, what the young locusts have left, other locusts have eaten”. (Joel 1:3,4).

The first thing you need to do in a crisis is “LOOK AROUND”. That was the first message all those years ago, and that’s the first message for you today. Take stock. Look at the damage. Look around.

Back in our day we had locusts. Swarms of hungry little critters with teeth like razors and appetites like starving teenagers. They would march through the land and eat anything. There was no fruit left, no veg, no crops. They even ate the bark on the trees. There wasn’t even any food in the temple for the sacrifices. And we entered into a famine unlike anything we’d ever known before.

And so I’d encourage you in 2020 as you face your crisis, to do what God told us to do. To look around. Look at the damage. It’s not easy to do. Look if you can bear it at the death toll on the BBC website. It’s coming down in the UK, for which you can be thankful, but it’s 376,000 and climbing globally. Look around. Look at the business that are closing. Look at the damage to the economy. Look around. Look at the hospitals. Look at the schools. Write down what you are seeing for posterity. Tell it to your children and your grandchildren.

Look around. It’s not just a medical disaster, it’s a spiritual disaster. It’s because people have turned their back on God that diseases and sadness have come into the world. That doesn’t mean that it’s anyone’s particular fault if they are suffering. But we all need to step back and look at how we are living. God has something to say about it. I wonder if we’ll listen. But for now, the first lesson. Look around. Look around at the damage. Look around at the carnage. Look around.

My name’s Joel and this has been the first edition of “A scroll from Joel”.