Slices
Prepare
It’s time to stop. Lay aside your to-do list. The greater the challenge you face, the more essential it is to do nothing but pray. Later, God will show you what actions to take.
Bible passage
A call to lamentation
13 Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn;
wail, you who minister before the altar.
Come, spend the night in sackcloth,
you who minister before my God;
for the grain offerings and drink offerings
are withheld from the house of your God.
14 Declare a holy fast;
call a sacred assembly.
Summon the elders
and all who live in the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
and cry out to the Lord.
15 Alas for that day!
For the day of the Lord is near;
it will come like destruction from the Almighty.
16 Has not the food been cut off
before our very eyes –
joy and gladness
from the house of our God?
17 The seeds are shrivelled
beneath the clods.
The storehouses are in ruins,
the granaries have been broken down,
for the grain has dried up.
18 How the cattle moan!
The herds mill about
because they have no pasture;
even the flocks of sheep are suffering.
19 To you, Lord, I call,
for fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness
and flames have burned up all the trees of the field.
20 Even the wild animals pant for you;
the streams of water have dried up
and fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness.
Explore
What can we do when disaster strikes? The obvious answer – pray! – is not necessarily our first response. Perhaps this is because we are not sure how to pray in such circumstances. Lament, so central to the prayer of the Bible in the psalms, is not so widely practised by the church today. But before we can ‘cry out to the Lord’ (v 14) for answers, we need to mourn the gravity of the situation. This makes psychological as well as spiritual sense.
Joel addresses the spiritual leaders of his nation (v 13). They need to initiate a unified response to what is happening. The desperate food shortage had hit the very heart of the nation’s worship, its daily sacrifice in which the fruits of the land were offered to God.
The call is then to go out to the elders and ‘all who live in the land’ (v 14) to assemble together at the Temple to cry out to God. In verse 19, as forest fires take hold, the prophet himself adds his voice to this growing outpouring of prayer.
Respond
Is there a journey of prayer you need to go on? Is it one you need to take with others, not just alone? Does it lead through the unfamiliar territory of lament? Psalm 42 may be a place to start.
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: 2 Kings 15,16; Psalms 64,65
Pray for Scripture Union
Zoraida Ali-Smith, PA to the Director of Mobilisation, asks us to pray for the safeguarding team as they work closely with holiday and event leaders during the summer to ensure that children, young people, volunteers and staff are kept safe as we share the good news of Jesus.
