COMING OUT THE OTHER SIDE
Sometimes life just seems like a dark tunnel we will never get out of. Perhaps it is a natural disaster like the bushfires raging across New South Wales at present – bushfires that could hit Victoria again this summer. Sometimes it is more personal – the death of a loved one or a serious health scare and we feel we are never going to come out of the dark hole. Often it is no one’s fault but our own, but it is still just as dark and there is no one else to blame.
Our reading today is from the Book of Joel which is all about a severe plague of locusts which destroys the country’s food for the next year. Joel also takes this as an image of the disastrous things happening in other ways to the nation. People are asking where God can be in all this, and Joel is reassuring them that God has not forgotten them, that this time will not last forever. Sometimes all we can do is hang on and know that this time will not last forever.
Joel goes further, and tells the People that not only will God give them food and wine in plenty in the future, but God actually want to bring something better out of this bad thing that has happened. God will send his Spirit on all people, not just prophets and priests, and these are the words that came to Peter hundreds of years later to explain what was happening on the Day of Pentecost. That is worth holding onto. God does not cause bad things to happen to good people, but is with us throughout the bad times and wants to bring something even better to pass if we will be open to the Spirit of God.
The Pharisee did not think he needed any help – he was sure he was a righteous person whom God would delight in. But it was the tax collector who went home justified by God, because he acknowledged his life was a mess, all created by him and he threw himself on the mercy of God. Whatever our disaster, whether we caused it ourselves or it just happened, if we open ourselves to God’s mercy and love, we will not only come out the other side of the dark tunnel, the Spirit of God can make something new for us and for our world.
Robert Johnson
27 October 2019
