God, I thank You that You are the Master of the irreversibles. I remember the devastating plague of locusts that devoured Israel’s crops in Joel’s day. Yet, Lord, You called that multiplied swarm “My great army which I sent among you” (Joel 2:25, italics added).
Lord, teach me the lesson of the locusts. Let me learn that You are the Lord of devastation, too. Life is full of irreversibles. The crop that the locusts devoured was a lost crop. The year that the locusts had eaten was a lost year. The months that the prodigal spent in the far country were lost months. I heard a man cry out in agony, “O God, I’m bringing You the ashes of my life!” His early years were lost years. Israel’s thirty-eight years in the wilderness were lost years, and the generation that died there was a lost generation.
Lord, so many people have made lost decisions: the person who would not obey the missionary call, the man who married the wrong woman, the youth who followed the wrong career. Lord, have You anything to say to them?
“I will restore … the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25, KJV). God is the great Restorer. But how? How can He reverse the irreversible and change the inevitable? By time!
The next year the seed was planted and the harvest reaped. In a year the Almighty wiped out every trace of the locust. When Jesus healed the impotent man He wiped out thirty-eight years of irreversible weakness. He reversed the process of leprosy in the leper, of sin in Zaccheus, of death in Lazarus. Jesus is the great “turner-around.” He makes time fly backward and makes Naaman’s flesh like a child’s; the irreversible becomes reversed in His hands, and we eat what the locust cannot touch. Do so, Lord, in me!
“Who redeems your life from the pit; who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion” (Psalm 103:4).
Daily with the King 