The Lost Year

The latest addition of Bloomberg financial magazine called 2020 officially, “The Lost Year”.  The entire publication is dealing with the effects that COVID-19 will have on the world and the local economy. It asserts that any gains financially or as a nation in previous years will be lost due to the coronavirus pandemic.  The truth is they are right in calling this “The Lost Year”, even if we are only into the third month of the new year, but not for the reasons they think.

When you see the world through from a Biblical view point, we know that God is still in control.  It sure is “The Lost Year” or maybe better said, “The Year for the Lost”.  In these troubled days, I believe the church will see more lost souls come to salvation than ever before.  It may be the Lost Year because the church has finally left the building and decided to really be the Church.  It may be the Lost Year because the losses we have to sustain together gains us a new level of connection to those around us.  It may be the Lost Year because we have restrictions to travel and vacations, but instead we really connect as family and genuinely show our neighbor that we care for them.  It may be the Lost Year, because we are no longer too distracted and “too busy” to let our neighbor know that we are praying for their safety.  With God, anything is possible!  Maybe we should be calling 2020 “The Saved Year”.

With God:

Money can be restored

Property can be restored

Relationships can be restored

But sure, I understand the message from the magazine – one thing can never be restored and that is TIME.

Time flies and it does not return. Years pass and we never get them back.  Yet God promises the impossible: “I will restore the years that the locust has eaten” (Joel 2:25). The immediate meaning of this promise is clear. God’s people had suffered the complete destruction of their entire harvest through swarms of locusts that marched like an insect army through the fields, destroying the crops, multiplying their number as they went.

For four consecutive years, the harvest was completely wiped out. God’s people were brought to their knees in more ways than one. But “the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.” God said, “Behold I am sending to you grain, wine and oil, and you will be satisfied” (Joel 2:18-19).

In the coming years, God said, their fields would yield an abundance that would make up for what had been lost: “The threshing floor shall be full of grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. . . . You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied” (Joel 2:24, 26).

This wonderful promise for those people meant that years of abundant harvests would follow the years of desolation brought about by the locusts.  I wonder what would happen if we chose to see this pandemic the way God sees it.  Ministry like never before to the hurting.  Love exemplified like never before through the church that has now become visible because we are no longer in buildings but online all over the world.

Maybe, we will look back in 4 years from now and label this the beginning of “The Salvation Years”.

~Pastor Calhoun