Sleepers Awake
Opening Prayer
Lord, make me fully awake to the lament of the world around me. Instead of avoiding the pain, I bring it to You.
Read Joel 1:1–12
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
The word of the Lord that came to Joel son of Pethuel.
An Invasion of Locusts
2 Hear this, you elders;
listen, all who live in the land.
Has anything like this ever happened in your days
or in the days of your ancestors?
3 Tell it to your children,
and let your children tell it to their children,
and their children to the next generation.
4 What the locust swarm has left
the great locusts have eaten;
what the great locusts have left
the young locusts have eaten;
what the young locusts have left
other locusts have eaten.
5 Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!
Wail, all you drinkers of wine;
wail because of the new wine,
for it has been snatched from your lips.
6 A nation has invaded my land,
a mighty army without number;
it has the teeth of a lion,
the fangs of a lioness.
7 It has laid waste my vines
and ruined my fig trees.
It has stripped off their bark
and thrown it away,
leaving their branches white.
8 Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth
grieving for the betrothed of her youth.
9 Grain offerings and drink offerings
are cut off from the house of the Lord.
The priests are in mourning,
those who minister before the Lord.
10 The fields are ruined,
the ground is dried up;
the grain is destroyed,
the new wine is dried up,
the olive oil fails.
11 Despair, you farmers,
wail, you vine growers;
grieve for the wheat and the barley,
because the harvest of the field is destroyed.
12 The vine is dried up
and the fig tree is withered;
the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree—
all the trees of the field—are dried up.
Surely the people’s joy
is withered away.
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
What things going on in our world touch your heart? What things do you think touch God’s heart?The call from the very beginning of Joel is a call to wake up—to witness the destruction of the land, consider the impact of turning away from God, and lament.
Devastated by a locust invasion, there is nothing left to bring as an offering of worship to God. For those who have fallen asleep with wine, there is a call to awaken to how bad things really are.
When the earth is ruined and the staples of life are removed, people realize that they are not in control. They are at the mercy of God. There is nothing to be done but to weep and wail to God.
Yet there are some who avoid facing up to the situation. Drunk and sleepy, they ignore what has happened around them. “Wake up and weep!” comes the cry. “Everything is a mess.”
The fact that everything is a mess doesn’t inspire wakefulness. Yet, the voice of the prophet beckons us to remember what echoes down through the generations: the world is in trouble. Wake up! Lament and wail. And cry out to God.
Apply
How can you bring God’s love to a bad situation? Maybe it’s something personal to you or maybe a world-wide issue.
Closing prayer
Lord, give me the courage to face the devastation of our world, and not to hide from it. I surrender to You.
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