“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten” – Joel 2:25
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the beginning of this year was a rough one for me. Not really the beginning of the year, but the end of the spring semester, really. My life pretty much went to pot. You can look back at the (few) posts I had during that time and see that they were really dark. I was going through a super-hard time. I like to sum it up by saying that God really was taking away every good thing that I had. He was breaking me, in a hard and painful way.
But as I end this semester, I’m looking around me and realizing that things are a heck of a lot different. Those relationships that really were broken and in disarray are now restored. While last semester I worked my butt off and still didn’t get good grades, this semester my grades are reflecting the work I put into them. Last semester I was alone and broken. This semester I have friends and have been healed.
Not only that, but I’ve been blessed with more friends this semester, and really good times. My grades have many times been better than I’ve deserved, and really everything has just been better than good. It’s been excellent. I have been blessed so greatly by God–he has really “repaid me for the years the locusts have eaten”
The next verse in that chapter from Joel says this: “You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God” That’s the end result. So that God will get the praise and honor from my life.
Right now I’m praising God that he’s a God of restoration and healing. He gives good gifts to us that we don’t even deserve. Take comfort in that, wherever you are in life.
-Sarah
