Joel
God's Hand in My History
Week of Monday, June 17, 2002
The prophet Joel drifts into and then out of the Biblical drama in near total anonymity. All that we know about him comes from his very brief prophecy, but that is next to nothing since the entire book takes only about five minutes to read. His name means “Yahweh is God.” He tells us that he is the son of Pethuel, but that is of little significance since we know nothing about his father. Due to the several references to the temple sanctuary (1:9, 13–14; 2:15), some scholars think that Joel lived in Jerusalem, but that is only conjecture. Even the date of his prophecy is murky, with scholars suggesting dates ranging from as early as 835 BC to as late as 200 BC.
Joel does something that I have always wanted to do as a Christian but have always felt reluctant to do. He takes an everyday occurrence and makes a bold pronouncement that it was an act of God: the locust plague that we are now experiencing is an act of divine judgment calling us to repentance, renewal and redemption! Another way to say this is that Joel takes a human experience and interprets it in a distinctly theological way.
To modern, suburban intellectuals a locust plague sounds quaint and hardly the stuff of divine judgment, but you would not feel that way if you lived in an agrarian economy or if you grew up, say, as a Kansas farmer. Joel describes a plague of locusts that devastated the land, the economy and the entire people. Bark was stripped from trees, food vanished, seeds shriveled, granaries stood empty, cattle moaned from hunger and thirst, and streams evaporated into dry creek beds. With memories of the divine plagues of Moses's day in their corporate mind set, Joel then interprets this natural disaster as a theological sign. It is a “day of the Lord.” While we might think of that term with rosy optimism, Joel understands the “day of the Lord” as a day of dread, darkness, gloom and blackness (the phrase is used six times: 1:15, 2:1–2, 2:11, 2:31, 3:14, and 3:18). Finally, the people should understand this divine plague as, ultimately, a divine invitation to turn to Yahweh for redemption and forgiveness.
Can we do something similar today? Should we try? Just how should we trace the hand of God in the daily events of our personal lives or world history, whether large or small? As I write, a massive wildfire 20 miles long and 14 miles wide burns out of control south of Denver. It has already destroyed over 100,000 acres. If it rains too little the blaze might smolder all summer; if it rains too much the enormous ash deposits might be washed into reservoirs and cost millions of dollars to clean up. Is this the hand of God telling Colorado to wake up? But how could that be with all those hundreds of Christian organizations based in Colorado Springs?! Or maybe this was nothing more than a careless campfire gone very badly awry. Divine judgment, satanic attack, or merely human carelessness? Maybe none of those?
Or think back to the September 11 tragedy and recall all the various theological spins that Christians gave to it, from the goofy to the absurd to the thoughtful to the recklessly dangerous (as when Franklin Graham told a CNN reporter that the United States should respond with whatever means necessary, including nuclear weapons). To take a final, entirely trivial example: one April in Michigan I was snowed out of some golf plans. I returned to my office wondering whether Satan was preventing me from a time of relaxation and fun, or whether Yahweh was telling me to get back to work. Where is Joel when we need him?
As I think through the Scriptures I see many, different perspectives used to describe everyday events. As a young boy Daniel endured what might be called a savage act of ethnic cleansing, then ended up as the prime minister in the enemy nation of Babylon. Joseph was a victim of attempted fratricide. His brothers tried to murder him but Joseph understood a larger, divine plan in these evil human acts (Genesis 50:20, “You meant it for evil but God meant it for good.”). Job was ravaged by Satanic attacks, but we know something that he didn't, that while God did not cause His problems He permissively allowed them. Further, when Job pleaded to Yahweh for an interpretation or explanation, he received the biggest brush off in Scripture: “Who are you, you worm of a man, to question Yahweh?” When Rehoboam listened to the foolish advice of his upstart peers rather than to the wise counsel of experienced elders, and consequently plunged the nation into civil war, the chronicler describes this as a “turn of events from the Lord” (1 Kings 12:15). What happened, says Yahweh, “was my doing” (1 Kings 12:24). And for a really confusing example, there is King David's census of the people. 2 Samuel 24:1 indicates that this was an act of David incited by the Lord, but 1 Chronicles 21:1 says that Satan moved David to do this. Somehow, all three interpretations were true: divine intervention, human choice, and satanic temptation.
Who could forget the rebuke of Jesus when some well-meaning theologians attempted to interpret a personal tragedy (a man born blind) as a sign of God's judgment for personal sin (John 9:1–3)? No, said Jesus, be careful about making such linkages. Similarly, when some people suggested that some Galileans whom Pilate had murdered, or eighteen people on whom a tower had fallen, were “worse sinners” than their neighbors, Jesus rebuked them (Luke 13:1–5). The same is true regarding good fortune; we should not assume that these are “better people” whom God is blessing. Maybe great wealth, for example, is not a sign of God's blessing but the result of excessive ambition driven by greed and accomplished by human brilliance and hard work. Like a cancer victim whose deviant genes suddenly switch to “on” after a lifetime of being “off,” or a person who wins a lottery against astronomical odds, at times perhaps we do best to understand things as inexplicable good or bad luck with no apparent causation—God, Satan, or human choices.
Joel was a special instrument of God given unique revelations. I believe that Christians today have sanctified hunches, inspired insights, wise advice, and helpful suggestions when it comes to tracing the hand of God in my daily life, but not divine revelations that you could equate in importance with our Biblical canon (a few Christians disagree with me here). Furthermore, I have seen far too much ignorance, sin and foolishness in my own life to trust any prognostications that I might make about just what it is that God might be up to in the life of someone, much less in the events of world history.
Christians can say with confidence that nothing comes to us outside the scope and care of God's redemptive love. This applies not only to our little personal lives with all of their ups and downs, sins and sorrows. It also applies to all of world history, for all of creation, says Paul, looks forward to redemption (Romans 8:20–22). Joel has prophetic concerns for “all the nations” (3:2, 9, 12) and not just a bad summer of locusts in Israel. I love the words of the hymn, “Every joy or trial cometh from above, traced upon our dial by the Son of love.” We know that to be true, and we know that pure chance, divine intervention, Satanic attack, and our own choices come into play. Sometimes we get inklings how all of these fit together, but often we do not know exactly how, when or why, and we never will.
But does that finally matter? I think not, because, like many of the prophets, Joel wants to remind Israel that even in the midst of a locust plague that signifies God's judgment, Yahweh always longed to love, forgive and redeem them. His prophecy announced judgment but also redemption, for Yahweh called the people to “rend your hearts and not merely your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity” (2:12–13). He even longed to restore to His people all that the locusts had destroyed (2:25) and, in the very last verse of the prophecy, to “pardon their blood guilt” (3:21).
What Yahweh gives us, then, is a compass with the magnetic north of His love to point us in the right direction, not a road map that explains and interprets every detail and bump in the road. Miraculous intervention, our own choices good and bad, spiritual warfare, and even some form of inexplicable chance all come into play. Every once in a while we might venture with confidence to explain how, but more often than not we can't, and Jesus reminds us that sometimes it is best not even to try. But Joel reminds us that divine love superintends all of our history, whether personal, national or cosmic. Of that you can be sure.
The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself Copyright ©2002 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.
