after the locust, there will be a feast

“I’ll make up for the years of the locust,
    the great locust devastation—
Locusts savage, locusts deadly,
    fierce locusts, locusts of doom,
That great locust invasion
    I sent your way.
You’ll eat your fill of good food.
    You’ll be full of praises to your God" 
                                        Joel 2:25

I've had many seasons in my life when it seems as if everything good was being destroyed before my eyes and there was nothing I did to precipitate it, nor anything I could to stop it...

If you can relate read on, if not, read on so when it does...

To be honest, there are many times in my life when I baited disaster. I'll own up to it, but there have been long seasons of wasting and desolation. 

...but today I am in a season of harvest and redemption of what seems like the first half of my life. 

 
"God blessed Job’s later life even more than his earlier life. He ended up with fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand teams of oxen, and one thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first daughter Dove, the second, Cinnamon, and the third, Darkeyes. There was not a woman in that country as beautiful as Job’s daughters. Their father treated them as equals with their brothers, providing the same inheritance."
                                                                                             Job 42:12-15

It seems as if I have been given a bit of my inheritance NOW...which is fitting, as the Kingdom of God has broken in...

I once had a day-dream of the Great Banquet 
...(God often shows my heart things like this)

I was seated at a great table, under a huge blue sky, surrounded by people I knew well, but couldn't make out who they were...

we were all laughing, and smiling, and there was such joy!

The first course was served, and it was in cast-iron skillets...

I peered in, and it was fried locusts...
the ones that had eaten all the years of my life...

we feasted on them, they were turned to good. 

wait for it...with joy 

Compost for Christ

It's that time of year hear in New England when "leaf peepers" come out...

God does a grand thing...he turns the lights off just enough by tilting the angle of the earth, resulting in the heat of summer turning to the cool of fall...

He shows off with a massive mural across the hills.

The colors were always in the leaf, it's just that they were in full sun, doing their thing, and the new life was busy producing chlorophyll...the green simply covered what was there.

The fireworks can't last, so the leaves fall to the ground,
and die,
and all that they did becomes the launch pad for the next seedling.

God does this is us too...

But we have to be willing to fall from the tree.
Look;
"At about that same time Jesus left the house and sat on the beach. In no time at all a crowd gathered along the shoreline, forcing him to get into a boat. Using the boat as a pulpit, he addressed his congregation, telling stories.
“What do you make of this? A farmer planted seed. As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road, and birds ate it. Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn’t put down roots, so when the sun came up it withered just as quickly. Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled by the weeds. Some fell on good earth, and produced a harvest beyond his wildest dreams.
“Are you listening to this? Really listening?”

God composts all the good and bad from our past lives, and plants his new in us. 
It was always there, waiting for us to drop. 

A life that has become dead wood for God is the only place his New Life can grow...

Sometimes, we try and plant on rocky soil, and places like that...

But the winds and rains come and mud slides take it all away. 

We can't produce the life, 
or even prepare the dirt. 

All we can do is let go, 
and let God. 

Compost for Christ. 
 

listen up

‘The Lord your God is with you,
    he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
    he will quiet you with his love,
    he will rejoice over you with singing’ (Zephaniah 3:17).

Most days, I want to bury my head under my pillow and stop the noise...

So many voices competing with the voice of God. Some days it's easy to hear him, others, not so much.

I'm learning to rest in the fact that simply because I intentionally work at being still means that God is speaking to me.

 "You're not in charge here. The Father who sent me is in charge. 

He draws people to me - that's the only way you'll ever come. 

Only then do I do my work, 

putting people together, 

setting them on their feet, 

ready for the End." 

                                     John 6:44

Can you hear him?

He is calling...sometimes a whisper

                             sometimes a scream

nevertheless, He is singing His delight over you today beloved.