Return to the Lord your God

by Robert Mohns

“‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and He relents over disaster.” | Joel 2:12–13

A number of years ago a company ran a successful back to school campaign with a rendition of a classic Christmas song, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” The ad featured a scene of parents merrily wheeling a shopping cart down the store aisle, filling it up with school supplies in the happy anticipation of children returning to school and the family returning to the familiar patterns of life that were in abeyance during the summer holidays.

Fast forward to our current situation, and that image and little ditty seem totally alien. Far from a happy return, parents and children are struggling to know what the new school year will be like. The stress, anxiety, and pressure of making choices concerning the return to school are palpable. Teachers and educational administrators are feeling the strain of the return to the classroom. The call for employees to return to their places of work is also often met with dread, fear, and reluctance.

In our western provinces, our agricultural and livestock producers are hearing the call to return to the land for harvest time and are experiencing droughts, plagues, and crop failures. For many agricultural producers, this harvest season is hardly a return to the most wonderful time of the year. Merry music just does not seem to cut it in this season.

The long anticipated and promised return to normal seems to have dissipated like a wisp of thin cloud in the heat of the midday scorching sun, replaced with a thick, acrid pall of smoke tearing our eyes and choking our throats. The cries of distress and mourning of loss have drowned out our songs of celebrated returns.

The long anticipated and promised return to normal seems to have dissipated like a wisp of thin cloud in the heat of the midday scorching sun, replaced with a thick, acrid pall of smoke tearing our eyes and choking our throats. The cries of distress and mourning of loss have drowned out our songs of celebrated returns.

Return? What will we return to, we wonder.

In the days of the prophet Joel, God’s people faced a crop failure caused by a plague of locusts. It would mean the starvation and horrific death of many people. The plague came as God’s promised discipline to the people’s sinful disobedience.

One day, through His prophet Joel, God spoke to his people saying, “Return to Me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

When all the attempts of God’s broken, sinful, and rebellious people to fix their dire situation, to make their life better on their own, failed, and when they faced the near reality of their bodies returning to the dust of the ground from whence they arose, God spoke His Word of deliverance. They were about to meet their God. Not the God they supposed nor the God that they had created in their own imagination, but the true and living God. Then they would know Him as He is, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

When they could not come to Him, He would return to them with human flesh and blood in the person of the Son of Man and Son of God, Jesus Christ. No longer would the word, “return” be a word to dread, but it would be a word of promise and of hope.

God still speaks through the Words of His prophet Joel and the rest of Scripture to sinful and broken people in every generation. “Return to the Lord your God,” and “lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). It is a good word, filled with promise and hope for you.

Return to the Lord your God, who forgives your sin. Return to the Lord your God, who promises to deliver you. Return to the Lord your God, who in Holy Baptism has put to death your sinful nature and has filled you with true righteousness and real life that avails unto eternal life. Return to the Lord your God, who has set a table before you to nurture you along life’s weary way. Return to the Lord your God, who returns for you to take you to His heavenly home.

Return to the Lord your God for He is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love. Like the prodigal son’s return to his father, so God’s call is a return to Him who has already prepared the sacrifice of our redemption for us (Luke 15).

The world’s enticement to return to a season that is the most wonderful time of the year rings hollow to our ears right now. Its vainglory has been revealed for what it is. By contrast, God’s call to return is filled with grace and hope and promise. God grant us ears to hear His call to return.

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Rev. Robert Mohns is Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC)’s West Regional Pastor.

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