Tag: plague

The Years the Locusts have Eaten

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Our oldest living grandparents have never seen anything like this. The alcoholics can’t drink it away or numb it. It’s making history and parents imagine what they’ll tell their children or their children’s children in days to come. A new dread has overtaken the land—so unknown that people feel powerless in its wake. The grief for all that’s been lost is so painful it feels like a virgin widow mourning her husband instead of enjoying her wedding night. Our pockets are so empty there is nothing to put in the church’s offering plate. The store shelves and market stands are empty. Our joy feels withered, like fruit on the vine in drought.

Worldwide 21st century pandemic, or the first chapter of Joel? Both.

The Old Testament prophecies of Joel are easy to overlook. It’s a short, 3-chapter book in the minor prophets about a locust plague that decimated the land and its people. It’s very apocalyptic and, honestly, hard to relate to—that is, unless you’ve lived through a global calamity yourself.

Reading Joel in the shadow of international tragedy was a unique experience. The first half chapter summarized above left me wide-eyed with shock. This ancient text came alive now that I shared a similar experience with its original audience. The first chapter goes on to describe religious leaders in open anguish before their people, and fasting and repentance because no one knows why calamity has struck except for our sin. The food sources are dried up. The land and its people and animals all go hungry and are left parched. There’s a fair bit of aimless wandering, widespread suffering, and storehouses and gathering places left empty and in ruins.

All of those experiences sound so familiar. No matter how much bread we bake or research we read, we can’t ignore that we still don’t understand what is happening around our world, nor how to stop it or minimize the damage. Our economies are crashing. Our marketplaces have empty shelves too. Our religious leaders desperately try to point us back to God, but the places of worship lie empty. Here in Uganda I’ve seen the empty market stalls. The land isn’t suffering here, as under a drought, but the livestock are thinner and sicker as limited resources have been given to people instead of land and animals.

Joel closes chapter 1 speaking about fire that has devoured the fields. We joke about our world being on fire. We have seen protests and riots, because the world has slowed down its spin enough for us to step back and notice our oppressive systems. Violent and opportunistic crime is on the rise as people become more desperate with hunger and poverty. People starve in slums and refugee camps. Treatable diseases are overlooked and untreated more than ever as our hospitals fill with pandemic victims. Global mental health is in crisis. Dictatorial governments have seized even more power. Marginalized people who already lived on the edge struggle for plain survival. Our world IS on fire.

A theme from the first chapter of Joel rings true for us too: large-scale disaster overlooks nothing and no one. The land in Joel’s day was ravaged by drought, famine, and locusts. But it wasn’t just the food that was affected—young and old, wealthy and poor, people and animals, land and water—all suffered. Even though our pandemic has been a global health disaster, it has hit our economies, governments, communities, and every other sphere of society, with crippling force. Every sector has taken a beating. All the destruction and brokenness has left our literal and metaphorical fields dried, shriveled, and unprotected: just waiting for fire to blaze through and pile calamity upon calamity. Catastrophe reminds us how little control we actually have.

But chapter 2.

The second chapter of Joel reminds us that the Lord is in complete control. Yes, he sends the locusts. Yes, he is holy and just and must punish sin. But he is also merciful and good.

The chapter opens with a nightmarish horror scene. Alarm bells ring and trumpets sound to announce an invading army, but the army is locusts. They black out the sun and moon and break over the mountaintops like a grisly dawn. The land that was lush like Eden before them is a barren desert waste behind them. They move and sound like an untamed wildfire crackling and leaping, like soldiers whose formation is not broken by obstacles, enemies, or defense walls. They pour over and through everything and the earth quakes beneath them.

These images depict the utter helplessness Joel’s people felt in the face of their plague. Nothing could stop the onslaught, and nothing was spared in its path. The locusts even crept into homes through windows, like thieves in the night, violating any sense of privacy or security the people felt. There was no refuge.

But then comes the great parenthesis of Joel. Between talks of plague, judgment, and devastation, the Lord gives an offering of mercy: “Even now, return to me with all your heart…,” “tear your heart and not your garments.” Why? Why should the people trust to the mercy of a God who has only measured out judgment? Because of the ancient name of God, the name he gave to Moses in the burning bush as he was sent to deliver God’s people from slavery.

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.

Who knows? He may turn and have pity

And leave behind a blessing…

Joel tells us that this wrathful God shows grace and compassion. His anger is slow, but his love overflows. He can cancel calamity. And if you return to him, he may himself turn and deliver blessing instead of punishment. Joel tells the people to gather, young and old. No one is exempt. Help along the tottering elders. Bring in the nursing babies. Interrupt the honeymooners. Weep openly as a people. Repent of your sin and pray for the Lord to spare his people, not to prevent their shame, but the Lord’s. Beg him to relent so that the world will know the Lord’s character and his unchanging love for his people.

Then, Joel says, the Lord will reply with abundance. Food will once again be plentiful in the land. The people and the whole land and its animals can rejoice. The rain returns. The storehouses and places of harvest are full.

Unlike Joel’s people, we are not under the Old Testament covenant promises. Our plague is not necessarily covenant punishment. But the book’s prophecy is filled with God’s truths nonetheless. We too have faced nightmarish scenarios as Coronavirus has overtaken the land. We feel helpless and desperate. We don’t know how to halt it, or how to stop up the holes in our defenses. Our homes don’t even feel safe after we were locked inside them and our privacy and security there feels violated.

Our situation is not the same, but the Lord’s character IS. He is still gracious and compassionate. He is still merciful. Our lives, too, have been interrupted and changed. But just like Joel promised, ‘normal’ can return and we can live in abundance. Disaster has made us desperate, and in our desperation we have new reason to turn to the Lord.

It is here in narrative that the Lord says something startling: “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.” What does he mean? How can you repay devastation, lost life, trauma? He quickly answers with a beautiful passage that gives me chills. Peter quotes it at Pentecost.

And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth… And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the survivors whom the Lord calls.

Wow. Will the Lord repay in material abundance after a calamity? Perhaps. But he promises an even greater repayment for the trauma we have endured. If we repent, if we use this calamitous interruption to dig into our own hearts and submit them to the Lord, he will repay us with his Spirit.

The years the locusts have eaten—the difficult days we have experienced—will be repaid. Many of us have found a deeper relationship with God during this time of confusion and tragedy. Our life is enriched for the time we have spent with the Lord. We can use the interruption and the unquestionable grief and fear to drive us deeper into our need for Him and his constantly present Spirit with us.

Not only that, but this is a time of new pioneering for our churches. As they have closed and services have moved online or into homes, we have sifted our ‘religious practices.’ What church traditions are actually life-giving to us? Which ones prop up unnecessary cultural habits we can do without and still have abundant life with the Spirit of God? We have seen and felt the Spirit moving amongst God’s people as we have worshipped at home or with our own instruments together with our families and small communities. This is a time of refreshing and renewal—a time of God pouring out his Spirit abundantly on his people who seek him and repent of the hidden sins these times have forced us to face.

Yes, the Lord sent the locust plague to Joel’s people, and yes, he sent the Covid plague to us. The third chapter promises judgment on the Lord’s enemies just as the first two chapters promise it for his own people. He abhors the sins of selling people or trading them for goods. He is disgusted when defenseless people are abused and taken advantage of. The Lord prepares for war on his enemies and will scythe down even the most powerful among them like grass in a field. Where wickedness is ripe, the Lord is ready to cut it down.

But that does not mean he is not merciful. God is just and cannot abide sin, but he delights to show grace. When he does, the world stage will know of his unconditional, redeeming love to people who rely on him to save them. Unlike with the locust plague, God promises this time during judgment that he will dwell with his people and be their place of refuge. He is sovereign over the disasters of the world. But he is also sovereign over their outcomes. The Lord delivers us. He fills us with his Spirit. He gives us life abundant after calamity. He offers hope. He repays the years the locusts have eaten.

The Panic of Pandemic and the Peace that Passes all Understanding

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The world is out of control right now. Thousands of deaths, uncounted infections, countries closing borders, travel bans, quarantine, economic downturn, runs on grocery stores. Some of the world’s most treasured cities look like ghost towns. “Coronavirus refugee” has entered our vocabulary as people caught traveling can’t return home, or those who have the means flee their homes willingly. Schools and religious institutions shut their doors or find creative ways to meet.

For the first time in living memory, our world faces a truly global pandemic.

It’s interesting to consider what “plague” has looked like in different eras of history. All of the sudden our minds are thrown back to the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, and other diseases without name or medical diagnosis that have shaken our civilizations. We remember stories of Christians tending the sick at risk of their own health. We call up dark images like the plague doctors in their beaked masks and compare them to the yellow hazmat suits and breathing masks of our modern imagination. We consider the suspicion neighbors and friends must have harbored toward one another as soon as a black cross was spotted on someone’s door, and we compare it to the sideways glances we see when someone coughs too loudly.

These human experiences are not unique to our generation and Coronavirus. Plague, pestilence, pandemics… they always conjure up panic and suspicion like some sort of black magic. They make us suspect even the air we breathed freely only the day before.

Pandemics pull back the curtain and expose humanity for what we really are, and what we find there can be both vile and hopeful—at once uplifting and depressing. We see the ugly faces of poverty and brokenness and all the harm they cause in our communities. But we also see the good neighbors who bring groceries to vulnerable community members. We see panic and greed at their worst, but we also see altruism shining like a light in the darkness. Widespread diseases shake our illusion of control and remind us how small we are in this universe after all. They deeply unsettle us, destroy our routines, and cause us to question unshakable assumptions about our safety, health, and security. But in trying times we are further exposed as the creatures we are, made in the image of God. We see sacrificial care, unconditional love, creative ingenuity, and unwavering compassion. These qualities can only come from a good Creator and his reflection in us.

Watching the Coronavirus pandemic unfold from my home here in Uganda has felt at times like an out-of-body experience. Our country as yet has no documented cases. But border security is tightening. Many travelers from infected countries are quarantined upon entry. People change their cultural habits to better protect themselves, their families, and neighbors at high risk of contracting the virus. The many cultures surrounding me that deeply value formal greetings have adjusted to elbow or fist bump greetings instead of the traditional handshakes. Hand washing stations—even ones as simple as a bucket with a tap—have popped up outside of markets and businesses. People gather in smaller groups to minimize social interaction.

But some things have not changed. Some aspects of life carry on unaffected. Our Sudanese brothers and sisters pray every Sunday in every church for three things: peace, the Church, and the sick. Many of them are refugees, and even the ones who aren’t still live in a culture with much fewer illusions about controlling illness and death or powerful governments. This Sunday I stood with bowed head, listening to the smooth Arabic words tumbling on as we prayed. When we prayed for peace, we asked the Lord to bring peace to warring countries, and to protect innocent people in volatile areas. when we prayed for the Church, we asked God to strengthen our brothers and sisters in areas where they can’t meet because of the virus, and for our Father to shine light and hope through us to the hurting world around us. And as we prayed for the sick, we asked the Lord, like always, to have mercy on those with malaria, with typhoid, with diabetes and malnutrition. Nothing else changed except we calmly added coronavirus to the list. The faith of refugees—in a God who withstands war and disease and famine and drought unchanged—cannot be shaken by any sickness, however new or unknown it may be.

Other things remain the same too. We keep our jugs, jerry cans, and tanks full of water, because dry season or collapsing infrastructure could both stop our water just the same. We live largely non-electrified lives, and the simplicity saves us the stress of wondering when the power will be cut or worrying about charging appliances and devices that don’t add much value to our lives in the long run. We keep basic medications in our house and live on simple medical know-how already because good doctors are hours away, coronavirus or no.

But some things have changed. The president of the country just asked for a month of precautionary measures: meet in small groups, close schools, worship in homes instead of churches, don’t hang around in markets more than necessary. New border regulations have stranded teammates out of country. Expat friends working with different organizations can be here one day and gone the next because their passport country demanded them back home, or their employer ended their contract, or all foreign personnel are evacuated as a precaution.

Most recently I got an email from my company asking me to consider the future. IF the virus comes, and IF I contract it, what scenarios am I comfortable resigning myself to? If medical evacuation isn’t an option and in-country medical care can’t meet my needs, am I content to stay with that knowledge? Would I prefer to relocate to an undesignated location with better health care for an unspecified amount of time? Those emails made the virus on its global stage suddenly very personal and immediate. I was forced to consider what measures I would take and plans I would make. I had to consider the what-ifs of the virus making it into Uganda. I considered what good I could do if I chose to stay or go. I considered my refugee friends who are immunocompromised and have no option of evacuating to save themselves or their loved ones.

In the end, my decision was to stay. It was a decision knowing I stayed with empty hands and not much to offer my neighbors and friends if or when the virus does come. It was a decision to stay and commit to quarantine or sickness, to limiting my social interaction and ministry, to grief and lament, to solitude and solidarity, whatever may come.

As I prayed through that decision I played and sang through precious words of faith from my hymnal, words like, “His word shall not fail you — He promised / Believe him and all will be well / Then go to a world that is dying / His perfect salvation to tell!” and “Whenever clouds arise / when songs give place to sighing / and hope within me dies / I draw the closer to him / from care he sets me free / his eye is on the sparrow / And I know he watches me.” I found peace and comfort in the Lord’s presence and in obedience to him founded on faith in his unchanging character. My imperfect faith in a perfect God is the only thing that can bring my heart to sing in worship, “Oh when I come to die, / Oh when I come to die / Oh when I come to die / give me Jesus. / Give me Jesus, / Give me Jesus! / You may have all this world, / Give me Jesus.”

But these words of worship come from a faith founded in an immovable God. He is not surprised by any virus or pandemic we may experience, and the death, the sorrow, and the fear that come with it do not take away one iota of his love and compassion for us. He is still the God that heard King David’s cry for mercy and stopped the Israelite plague at the threshing floor of Araunah (1 Samuel 24). He is still the God that passed over Israelite homes and showed his unmerited mercy by sparing their firstborn children. He is still the God who stopped a plague in the Israelite camp when he was worshipped between the living and the dead (Numbers 16).

He is still the God of Habakkuk: “His splendor was like the sunrise; rays flashed from his hand, where his power was hidden. Plague went before him; pestilence followed his steps. He stood, and shook the earth; he looked, and made the nations tremble.” And we can answer both the blessings and the trials God brings with Habakkuk, “Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

He is the same God who has led his people through the plagues of history, and we follow him still through this one. He passed over the Israelites and spared their firstborn. He offered himself as the perfect passover lamb to keep at bay the plagues of sin and death we fully deserve. As we come to Easter may we remember that sacrifice in a new light. And as we contemplate an Easter and Holy week shared only from our homes and separated from our church families, may we remember the small band of disciples who met together in an upstairs room. They were small in number because of persecution instead of plague, but their fear was the same. And Jesus’ answer to them just as well answers us: “‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.'” In these uncertain and fearful times, we carry in us the Spirit of God himself to comfort and to calm, and to propel us out into a world in need of the hope we share.