“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God…Who knows? He may turn and have pity. (Joel 2:12a, 13, 14a, NIV 1984).
My Musings – “Even now” implies rebellion near the point of no return. Just look at how the book of Joel begins. “Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers?” (Joel 1:2, NIV 1984). The expected answer? No. The call going out? “Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!” (Joel 1:5, NIV 1984). That is to say, repent. Before we reach the point of no return. “For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. (Matthew 24:21–22, NIV 1984).
“Who knows” implies hope yet remains. “He may turn and have pity.” Why might He do so in the face of such terrible times? For indeed “there will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power.” (2 Timothy 3:1–5, NIV 1984). Why might He turn? Because “He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity.” (Joel 2:13, NIV 1984). But we must turn repent in order for Him to relent.
My Advice – There have been “terrible times” in the past. Yet God has, thus far, not “cut short” the times. He has, so far, “[relented] from sending [the final] calamity.” We live in increasingly “terrible times” now. Times that look a lot like 2 Timothy 3. But is this “distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again?” How much longer will our “even now” last? “Who knows?” Not us.
What we do know is that “[God] is patient with [us], not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” (2 Peter 3:9–10, NIV 1984).
One day, the days will be “cut short.” There will be no more “even now.” “Since everything will be [cut short] in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?” (2 Peter 3:11, NIV 1984). Born again people. The “elect” people. If you are reading this, “even now” you have time to “rend your heart.”
The Brew Is A Musing 