Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God. Joel 1:13 – While difficult to date when the book of Joel was written for the prophet doesn’t identify who was king at the time of his serving, we do see him speak about worship at the temple so likely this meant he ministered before the temple was torn down by Babylon. Joel speaks of an invasion of locust that had hit God’s people. They had already destroyed so much and more locusts were coming to destroy even more. This was a dire situation for the people for that meant any sort of plant life to eat was gone, so no wheat for bread and no fruit from the trees and no grapes on the vine. Notice though the direction Joel points the people in why they should mourn. It wasn’t simply mourning because they didn’t have food on the dinner table, they were to mourn because no wheat meant not grain offerings to God and no grapes meant no wine for drink offerings to the Lord. This famine of food equated to a disruption to their ability to worship and offer to the Lord how they were supposed to. I wonder how many of us in that same situation would have had that as our first thought when the locust hit, that this would make it difficult to worship the Lord. We too should mourn for the things that come against our ability to worship the Lord like we are called to. We should mourn when we see hatred between brothers in Christ or division between church leaders. While certainly we can still worship God in the midst of that, such things are like locust eating away at the health that should be there. Let’s have a heart the breaks when we see things come against the church, but also a steadfastness to seek to end its destruction when it comes. I love you, but Jesus loves you more – Mac – Daily DEVO 3286
Question To Ponder: What’s another thing that can cause destruction in the church?
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