The years restored
What the locust ate
The locust does not kill in an afternoon. It works in waves, swarm after swarm, the swarming and the hopping and the destroying and the cutting, until what was a green land is stubble and the years themselves seem eaten. Joel had watched it happen — a nation stripped bare, season after season devoured, the kind of slow ruin that makes you stop counting what you have lost because the losing will not stop. And then, to that emptied land, God makes a promise so large it almost overreaches grief itself. He does not say only that the plague will end, that next year the swarms will stay away. He says He will restore the years that the swarming locust has eaten. Not the fields — the years. The time itself. The seasons that were stripped clean and seemed simply gone, written off as waste, are named as recoverable. And the promise does not stop at restoration; it runs on to satisfaction. You will eat in plenty and be satisfied, Joel says, and praise the name of the LORD your God who has dealt wondrously. The God who lets nothing be wasted reaches back into the eaten years and gives them.
“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”
— The LORD, through Joel — Joel 2:25 (WEB)
“You will have plenty to eat, and be satisfied, and will praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.”
This is Disorientation turning toward dawn at its most daring — the turn promising not merely an end to the devouring but the restoration of what was devoured. The phase asks you to hope past survival, to believe God can redeem the very years the wilderness ate. The dawn here does not just stop the loss going forward; it reaches back into the eaten time and gives it.
You may be grieving wasted years, time the locusts of illness, addiction, depression, or sheer aimless wandering ate clean away, seasons you have quietly written off as simply gone. Of all the griefs the wilderness hands you, lost time feels the one thing past undoing, so you make a private peace with the waste. A broken thing can be mended, a wound can heal, but a year the locust ate is simply gone — you cannot live it again. So we make a quiet peace with the waste. We tell ourselves the years to illness or addiction, to depression or doubt or sheer aimless wandering, are a sunk cost, a write-off best not examined. Joel's promise dares far more than that peace allows.
God restores the years the locust has eaten; He does not merely end the devouring but reaches back into the eaten time and gives it, folding even the waste into a story where the lost years come back fruitful. It does not merely comfort you about the future; it makes a claim on the past. God can take the eaten years and redeem them — fold them into a story where even the waste turns out to have been doing something, where the lost time is given back fruitful. This is more than survival, more than starting over from where the swarms left off. It is the redemption of loss itself. The years you have written off are not beyond His restoring. He deals wondrously, and the wonder reaches backward.
The Church, mourning wasted years, can scarcely picture them redeemed and so makes peace with the waste: a lost generation, decades of decline, seasons the locust stripped bare across whole movements and traditions. Joel refuses that peace on the Body's behalf. The LORD restores the years the locust has eaten. The wasted seasons of the Church are not past His power to redeem and make fruitful, and His restoring is not bounded by the calendar. Western and global Christianity need not settle for bare survival on the far side of the shaking. Restoration, not mere recovery, is the scope of the promise the whole Church is given, and the God who wastes nothing can give back fruitful even the years the Body counted simply gone.
When God reaches back into the eaten years, even the past stops being fixed and final. What is shaken loose is the verdict that the lost time is simply gone, beyond redeeming. What remains is the God who wastes nothing, whose restoring power is not bounded by the calendar, and who gives back fruitful even the years the locust ate.
- What years have I quietly written off as wasted, beyond any redeeming?
- Do I believe God's restoration reaches only forward, or back into the eaten time as well?
- Can I hope past mere survival, to a God who deals wondrously even with my lost years?
Lord, I have made a quiet peace with the years the locust ate, and called them simply gone. You promise more. Reach back into the wasted seasons and redeem them. Give back fruitful what I had written off, and let me praise You as the God who deals wondrously, even with lost time. Amen.