A scroll from Joel: look down!

My name is Joel BenPethuel but you can call me Joel. I doubt you’ve ever heard of me before, but I’m actually an Old Testament prophet. I lived 2500 years ago and you can read my book in the Bible. I lived through a locust plague. A terrible national crisis. But I learned from it lessons that I want to share with you in Huntingdon in the bigger international crisis that the world is facing today.

And if my message last week was summed up in the words “Look around”, the message this week is “Look Down”. And what we are thinking about today is tears. Now I wouldn’t be surprised if I get taken off the radio for being too negative, but I’m giving you full permission to be sad, even to shed a tear! That’s what I mean by “look down!”

Now I know that’s not a very British thing. Stiff upper lip and all that. But out in the middle East where I come from, we are a bit more expressive about our emotions. It’s good to have a good cry.

And in the first chapter of my book I tell people to weep, to wail, and to mourn. Joel chapter 1 verse 11. “Despair you farmers, wail you vine growers, grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed”.

Back in my day the loss of the crops was like a bereavement. It was gutting. The joy of the people withered away as the crops were eaten away by the locusts. But there was more behind it. The plague of locusts was related to the fact that the people had abandoned God and his ways. The failure of the harvest was a judgment on the failure of humanity to love one another and God.

And the Bible tells us to mourn that. You get a whole book in the Old testament called Lamentations, and in fact Jesus wept over Jerusalem because of the foolishness that he saw in the city.

You see all human suffering is related in some way to our selfishness and sin. So behind the locust plague was a people that had turned their back on God, and behind Coronavirus is a people that have turned their back on God.

And so I’d encourage you to mourn the tragedy that you are seeing in 2020. As the Queen said, “better days will return”, and indeed there will be good news to come in this scroll from Joel. But for the moment learn the lesson, mourn the crisis, “look down”. I wonder if you have shed any coronavirus tears yet?

You sometimes hear the words “good grief”. Well grief can be good, it can be a healing thing when it’s coming to grips with reality and mourning what you’ve lost. When it’s realising what has gone wrong.

“Look Down”. Mourn the tragic loss of life. Mourn the economic damage. Mourn also the racial tensions that you have seen in recent days. Good news is coming. But first. “Look around”, and “Look Down”.

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