Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

This morning, I am contemplating today's Old Testament reading from the Prophet Joel.

The passage in question follows a series of calamities that Joel prophecies will come on the Jewish nation: a plague of locusts and an invading army. In response to this crisis, God calls on the people to repent.

We don’t know what sins the people have done, just God’s call to repentance. I find this ambiguity notable. It’s all too easy to see a future crisis as a direct repayment for our specific sins.

However, God simply tells the people to repent — in light of the coming judgment — and there is little doubt about what this means. They are to turn to God ‘with all [their] heart’, and with ‘fasting and wailing and with mourning’ — because future judgment is coming.

Isn’t this the same situation for all of us? Although the thought makes me tremble, my own judgment approaches too, and God calls me to turn ever to him. There are many kinds of turning: a daily turning and also a larger reevaluation of life patterns — but each of them involves the turning of my heart, of my thinking.

The good news is that God delights when we turn towards him, in each little or large movement of the heart, because God is ‘merciful and compassionate. He is long-suffering and plenteous in mercy’ (Joel 2:13). And, in our Gospel lesson today, we are reminded that there ‘will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance’ (Luke 15:7).

So in the end, I find these readings to be a great comfort, and a motivation to keep turning in my life. Do you find it so?

Yours in Christ,
Justin