“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.
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.
Rend your heart! I must admit, I had to look up the work "rend" in the dictionary because it is not a part of my normal lexicon. The definition was powerful for me. What a great choice of words. According to Dictionary.com to rend is to "pull or tear violently". The nation of Israel had strayed far from God's ways. Joel was a prophet who was sent to call the nation back to their God. I am sure that for how far Israel had wandered from their God, the process of returning to him was extremely difficult. Tearing their hearts away from what they had replaced God with must have been so hard. I know that when I am not careful, and things begin to slip in my relationship with God and other things begin to take a more important role in my life than they should, and begin to take the place that God should hold, the process of returning is often painful and sometimes a violent tearing away is required. For this reason I rejoice in the promise Joel brings on the heels of his message of "rending our hearts". He says "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". In view of that, no matter how hard the "rending" is...TOTALLY WORTH IT!
May we "rend" our hearts this day to the Lord!
God is good! All the time!
Mathew M
All the time, God is good! Amen and amen!!
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