Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near
Joel 2:1
We're following along with Bible-in-a-Year. Yesterday, our theme was "Throw a Party!" Therefore, when I turned to Joel today, I was tempted to cite Joel 1:5, "Wake up you drunkards!"
But a good holy, God-honoring celebration is not the kind of drunkeness, sluggish, and fog that Joel (and so much of scripture) warn against!
For example, in Luke 12:16-21, Jesus tells about a parable about "the land of a rich man [which] produced abundantly. ... [The rich man] thought to himself, '... I will pull down my barns and build larger ones ... And I will say to my soul ... 'relax, eat, drink, be merry.' ' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.' "
Through scripture, our Lord keeps reminding us not to "get drunk on" nor "get consumed by" the things of this world. In Matthew 25:1-13, a group of partiers -- bridesmaids -- confronted a different kind of end to their life: the day of the Lord had come.
That is the message today from Joel: "The day of the Lord is coming. It is near!"
That's the message throughout scripture. John the Baptist called people away from the world and out into the wilderness. And while they were there, he invited them to "prepare a way for the Lord" and ready their hearts for the coming Messiah, by undergoing a baptism of repentence.
We too are invited pull away from the numbing influences of the world and prepare for the coming of the Messiah. It may be through the second coming. It's more likely to be a timely or untimely death. Either way, blow a trumpet -- in your heart or for the sake of others -- a prepare a way for the Lord.
In Christ's Love,
a guy who likes to quote a good friend,
"any day's a good day to go to heaven"
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