The years the locusts ate

Dear friend.

There’s something most of us carry quietly. Not loudly, not dramatically - just quietly. A failure. A season we’d give anything to undo. A relationship that slipped through our fingers before we knew what was happening.

At some point, without quite deciding to, we made a kind of peace with it. Not real peace. More like resignation. We told ourselves: that’s just the bit I don’t talk about now.

I want to offer you something today from the book of Joel - a short, ancient text written to people whose lives had been stripped bare. A plague of locusts had eaten everything. Their harvests were gone. Years of careful work, all of it taken.

And into that hollowness, God speaks.

“I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts.” - Joel 2:25

Not: I’ll forgive it and we’ll put it behind us. Give it back. That’s a completely different kind of promise.

There are three things in today’s devotional I think are worth sitting with. First, God names the devastation - he doesn’t gloss over it or tidy it up. Second, he promises restoration, not just forgiveness. And third - and this is the one that still catches me - the most broken place in your life might become the brightest.

I’m not asking you to fix anything today. Just to open the door a crack.

The full 5-minute video is here:

See you tomorrow.

Rob

Read this week’s devotionals here - https://open.substack.com/pub/battledrilldevotional/p/you-might-already-be-a-leader-heres?r=643q6o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true