(REFLECTIONS ON Joel 1:1-20)

In today’s Scripture, the prophet Joel speaks to God’s people regarding the destruction to their land and the resources to sustain life. Interestingly we read over and over again a reference to those things that are dried up.

v.10 The new wine dries up
v.12 All the trees of the field dry up
v.12 The vine dries up
v.12 Indeed, rejoicing dries up
v.17 For the grain is dried up
v.20 For the water brooks are dried up

As the vine, trees, water, grain and the wine produced from these natural resources dries up, so is the rejoicing from the sons of men.

Does this conjure up an image of a dry desert, with great thirst from the land and from God’s people? It is an image of a famine, where people hunger and thirst, but there is nothing to satisfy their physical needs.

The beasts groan, the people groan, and all of creation groans. We can almost hear the awful sound, like an hollow echo bellowing from a dark cave representing the silent groan over the Promised Land and God’s people of promise.

This is to be a wake up call for God’s people, and since we are not directly told by Joel why this is happening, perhaps it isn’t the why that is important, but rather what this wake up call should do to a dry and parched creation?

Brothers and sisters, when life dries up, are we sometimes too focused on the cause, the why, and do these questions then turn into complaints to the Lord? However, as Christians as we read Scripture, isn’t life in Christ often times symbolized by life giving water?

For example, in John 4, we read about Jesus telling the Samaritan woman that He is the source of living waters. In John 7:37, Jesus says, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”

In Revelation 22:1, we read about a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb. When life dries up we are reminded about our source of water in the dry times, and that is through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.

This reminds me of a song Crystal Lewis, a Gospel artist, used to sing during the Harvest Crusade, an annual large-scale evangelistic event in the United States called “Come just as you are.”

Come just as you are
Hear the spirit call
Come just as you are
Come and see
Come receive
Come and live forever

Life everlasting
Strength for today
Taste the living water
And never thirst again

Pastor Michael Lu
Enduring Word Bible Commentary: Joel 1