Return to Go—Together!
Opening Prayer
God of Love and Compassion, You delight in mercy (Mic. 7:18). Give us the grace to turn from our sins.
Read Joel 2:12–17
12 “Even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
13 Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.
14 Who knows? He may turn and relent
and leave behind a blessing—
grain offerings and drink offerings
for the Lord your God.
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion,
declare a holy fast,
call a sacred assembly.
16 Gather the people,
consecrate the assembly;
bring together the elders,
gather the children,
those nursing at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room
and the bride her chamber.
17 Let the priests, who minister before the Lord,
weep between the portico and the altar.
Let them say, “Spare your people, Lord.
Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’”
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
“Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture” (Psa. 95:6,7).
Joel exhorts his hearers to return to the Lord. Recasting God’s self-revelation to Moses in Exodus (Exod. 34:6), Joel makes his great announcement. “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Who knows? He may turn and relent” (13,14). With this in
mind, he urges all sorts and ages of people to repentance: women and men, children and infants, newlyweds and older people. Joel admonishes them to form a solemn assembly as a matter of urgency.
Joel’s is not a call merely to individual personal piety. Rather, he enjoins the people of God to gather as a congregation. They must fast, sound the shofar, and pray together. What Joel describes is similar to what still occurs in the synagogue on Yom Kippur every year. Jews gather to observe a fast, sound the shofar, and recite the attributes of God as they are found in Exodus 34:6 and are restated here.
Similarly, the New Testament summons Christians into a posture of community, to gather for worship and prayer as a church. This was the practice of Christian believers from the very start (Acts 2:42–45). Even so, decades later the writer to the Hebrews found it necessary to continue admonishing his hearers to “spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb. 10:24,25). When we ignore this call, retreating into our own individualistic practices of personal piety, we do so to our own detriment and to that of the Christian community at large.
Apply
Reflect on the place of the church in your life. Do you make the church a priority, finding comfort and challenge in gathering together with other believers?
Closing prayer
O Lord, help us to collectively recognize when we as a church have strayed from Your design and purpose, and as we repent give us a renewed vision of Your will.
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