Restoring The Years

Joel 2:25-27
25 “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
The crawling locust,
The consuming locust,
And the chewing locust,
My great army which I sent among you.
26 You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,
And praise the name of the LORD your God,
Who has dealt wondrously with you;
And My people shall never be put to shame.
27 Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel:
I am the LORD your God
And there is no other.
My people shall never be put to shame.

Many people have felt that their years of living are wasted. Dreams were lost, toys were broken, and hopes are gone. The past was a disaster, and the future could be worse.

Often, these helpless and hopeless feelings come not only in the quiet moments of the darkness of the night but also in the middle of a bright sunny day. They strike us when we are down.

As we look back and reflect at the years that have lived and passed, we begin to wonder where they have gone. Reminiscing the past does not do much good.

The past is filled with wrong choices and decisions we have made. Years lost to various addictions and obsessions, and also regrets and griefs arising from wrong relationships and friendships. The sins that enslaved us in the past keep recurring again and again.

By recalling a life that we have not chosen, we know that we have lived but wasted many years. We spent years waiting for something better but they never come. Those years are gone. And we can never get them back. Worst still, the wasted years continue as we remain trapped in our own foolish doings and sins.

As we face the unknown that is coming, we do not know what to do. But the Word of God gives us a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

God desires to restore the years that are wasted. But what He desires to do is not what we would expect. His ways are not our ways. His ways are higher than our ways.

His plan is not about us learning how to make better use of our remaining years. It is not a list of steps to fix what was broken and lost.

It is not a promise that if we believe hard enough, a miracle will happen, and a heavenly rewind button will appear so that we can travel back in time and restart all over again. His ways are something better and greater.

The prophet Joel recorded a great disaster in Israel. A locust plague has swept through the land of God. Not one wave but four consecutive waves, one after the other.

• the swarming locust
• the crawling locust
• the consuming locust
• the chewing locust

Plague after plague, locusts after locusts, wave after wave. Each one taking what the previous wave had left behind until all the fields were devoured and destroyed completely.

The harvests were wasted. The vineyards were gone. The granaries were empty. All the food supplies had been devoured and destroyed for a few years. Some Bible commentators said that the locust plague lasted for four consecutive years.

And for the people of Israel, it was not just a financial crisis. It was a survival emergency. A matter of life and death. Most of the Israelites depended on what grew from the fields. Watching those fields becoming wastelands year after year, they became extremely devastated and distressed.

But God told them that He would restore the years that the locusts had eaten and destroyed.

He did not promise new crops or good harvests in the next few years. He promised to restore the years. The years that had been devoured and swallowed up by disasters and calamities. God said that He would restore the years. Yes, restoring the years!

The Hebrew word for restore is shalam. It is very similar to shalom, which means peace, wholeness or completeness.

But shalam carries some legal and relational meanings. It is the word used for making restitution, settling a debt, paying back what was owed until the account is whole again.

However, this was not a promise that God would rewind time to reset what had happened. What had happened could not be undone.

But this was a promise that God would make the account whole again. What was consumed and wasted would be compensated for, not by returning the same identical years, but by producing a fullness in the remaining years that would account for what was lost.

The locust years could not be erased from the history of Israel. They had happened. The fields were destroyed. The years were wasted and gone. But the outcome was not final!

God is able to make something beautiful even in broken pieces and worthless ashes. He is able to make something whole again!

Isaiah 61:3
To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.”

The end of our sad stories is never conclusive unless God says so. What the locusts had devoured, God is able to make restitution and restoration. This remarkable promise is more than just a simple reset button.

But this promise of God only works if we trust and obey God. We must acknowledge that He is our God and we are His people! We need to do things His way. We cannot keep doing the same sinful things or making the same wrong choices in life and expecting a different outcome to happen.

How can our years be wasted? Firstly, through our own doings in making wrong choices and priorities, and having sinful lifestyles and addictions. Secondly, through circumstances beyond our control like diseases, sicknesses, and ill-treatment and abuse by others, robbing us of our joy, goods and life.

But God offers to do something beautiful like what finally happened to the prodigal son in Luke 11:11-32.

The young man demanded his inheritance early from his father as if his dad had already died. He took the money and traveled to a distant country, squandering everything he had. Through reckless living, he ended up feeding pigs and eating their food.

He wasted his years and resources. He also wasted his youth and future. But he came to his senses. He made an important decision. He returned home!

His father was waiting. He was very delighted when he saw his son from afar off. The father had spent those years waiting and watching for the return of his son. He did not forget about his son.

But the son who had returned was not the same young man who had left. He had been broken and humbled. He had learned the difference between a hired servant and a son.

He also discovered that even when he had erred and sinned against his father, there was still grace and mercy in the house!

He did not learn those important life lessons if he was living in the comfort of a cozy and relaxing home. He acquired them through sufferings and pains in a faraway country.

Those years staying away from the father were not wasted! They were precious and necessary for the growth and maturity of the prodigal son! A changed man, humbled and grateful. The past arrogance and pride were stripped away!

The important question is not why the years are wasted but who our God is. He is able to make all things beautiful in His time.

Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.

God knows what is happening to us, and what we are going through. He does the right thing just at the right time. But we can never completely understand what He is doing. God is in the midst of us, even in our wasted years!

Another good example was Moses. In his first 40 years, he grew up in Pharaoh's palace. He was well educated. He was also given very prestigious privileges and positions.

But all of his lavish and luxurious lifestyles encountered a drastic change. One day, he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking around and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. But eventually Pharaoh found out, and Moses had to flee to the wilderness.

He was then 40 years old. Everything he possessed was gone. The palace access was gone. The trust of his people was gone. His future in Egypt was gone. All of his dreams and aspirations were shattered!

Moses settled in Midian, and married a Midianite woman. His job was tending his father-in-law's sheep. He spent the next 40 years doing just that. Wasting his years in the wilderness taking care of sheep.

In the eyes of the world, Moses had missed the prime of his life. The golden window of opportunity had closed. He was no longer a young prince of Egypt pursuing great and wonderful plans, prospects and dreams. He had become an old man keeping someone else's flock in the middle of nowhere. He was waiting to die as a foreigner in a foreign land.

But God appeared to Moses in a burning bush. Not to a young man full with energy and aspiration, having a bright future ahead. But to an 80 years old man, watching and tending sheep faithfully for four decades in a desert.

Exodus 7:7
And Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three years old when they spoke to Pharaoh.

Moses was 80 years old when he and Aaron spoke to Pharaoh. His greatest work was not just the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. It was leading the people of God through the Sinai wilderness for 40 years!

How did God do that? First, He prepared Moses for 40 years in the Midian desert, tending stubborn and stiff-necked sheep. Then, He watched over Moses as he did similarly by leading His people for 40 years through the Sinai wilderness. The people of God were equally stubborn and stiff-necked like the sheep in Midian.

Those 40 years in the Midian desert produced a leader that the 40 years in the palace could not. Moses came out of the Midian desert knowing how to survive the weather and terrains. He knew how and where to find water. He knew the geography, the ecosystems, the plants and animals, and also the dangers and terrors of the wilderness. He also learned how to love, showing compassion to the people of God the same way he had shepherded the sheep.

To lead and feed millions of people in the wilderness for 40 years, a special leader was needed. And he must be trained before he could undertake this enormous and impossible task.

Beyond the years of experience and special skills, this leader had the required character, conduct and criteria to do the will of God. He was chosen and tested by God Himself.

Numbers 12:3
(Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.)

Moses was no longer impulsive and arrogant in his old age. He had become more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. This was not weakness in the eyes of God.

Moses was humble and gentle, having self-control. His patience and longsuffering with the disobedient and rebellious people of Israel was a true reflection of his complete trust and dependence on God.

Moses had spent four decades learning from the inside out. The 40 years Moses spent tending sheep in Midian were not wasted. They were necessary for training and building the man of God, preparing him for a task that no other human being on earth could do.

What appeared to be a failure turned out to be a successful making of a man of God to do the work of God!

We can never know the purpose of our wasted years. Maybe there is a divine plan for us in the midst of our sorrows and pains.

Romans 5:3-5
3 And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance;
4 and perseverance, character; and character, hope.
5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

We can have joy in our troubles because we know that these troubles produce patience. And patience produces character, and character produces hope. And this hope will never disappoint us, because God has poured out His love to fill our hearts. God gave us His love through the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to us.

This is not esteeming troubles and sufferings to be better, celebrating and self-imposing them into our lives unnecessarily. It is about what we should do when we face troubles and sufferings eventually.

Psalm 23:4
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Even though we have troubles and pains, we fear no evil for Christ is with us! His presence comforts us!

Whether we like it or not, we will have to travel through the valley someday. The valley is a part of our life journey. There is no detour from it.

Whether the valley years can produce something good will depend on our response and decision. Will we allow God to do His work, and have His ways in our life?

If we keep living and doing the sinful things and heading in the wrong direction, how can God restore us?

Luke 15:17-19
17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!
18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you,
19 and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.” ’

The prodigal son came to his senses, and returned to his father. He did not know what to expect. All he requested and needed was just essential food to survive! But something better was waiting for him!

Exodus 3:2-3
2 And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.
3 Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.”

Moses saw the burning bush from a distance. He would have gone home without doing anything. He was already 80 years old. A very old man. What good could this burning bush do for him?

But his faith persevered, and his hope was still alive! He turned aside, drew closer to the burning bush, and saw God face to face!

Proverbs 3:5-6
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.

In our own understanding, we can never know what is in store for us when our years are wasted. But if we turn aside and seek God, maybe His bush is still burning. Maybe He will restore the years!

If interested, please listen to this song Beauty For Ashes.

Written on 1 September 2026