September 23, 2026

In The Storm Too Long

Joel 2:25 – “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.”

There comes a moment, usually quiet and unplanned, when a person finally stops and adds up the years. Not years lost to tragedy or circumstance beyond their control, but years spent wandering somewhere they chose to stay, distracted by things that promised more than they delivered, distant from God not because He moved but because staying away simply became a habit nobody interrupted. The math is never pleasant to do. A decade here, a handful of years there, time that cannot be recovered no matter how much clarity finally arrives about what it cost.

What makes that moment different from despair is what usually accompanies it. Alongside the grief over wasted time comes an equally sharp awareness of how patient God had been through every bit of it, never withdrawing, never giving up, simply waiting with the same door open the entire time a person was busy walking the other direction. That combination, real regret paired with real gratitude, is where most people finally start asking a hard question. Is there a way to recover any of what those years cost, or is the wandering simply a loss to be carried permanently.

Joel prophesied to a nation that had watched locusts strip their fields bare, and God’s promise to them was not a vague comfort but a specific one. He would repay the years the locusts had eaten. Not erase the fact that the years happened, but restore what they had cost, redeeming even the wasted seasons for something good. That promise was never meant only for insects and harvests. It reaches into every version of eaten years a person carries, offering not amnesia about what was lost but genuine restoration of what remains.

Nobody gets the wasted years back exactly as they were. But the God who kept the door open the entire time is still in the business of restoring what those years cost.

Today’s Prayer: Lord, thank You for Your patience during the years I spent far from You. Help me live in the coming years with the gratitude those wasted years taught me. Amen.

Reflection Question: What years do you look back on with regret, and how have you seen God’s patience carry you through them anyway?