Lasting EverSample

HARDSHIP AND HARVEST

After seeing lifelong dreams fulfilled in music and also through starting a family, we faced an incredibly hard season full of challenging career changes, burnout, and miscarriages. We felt like the farmer in Joel 2 who, after seasons of great harvest, witnessed tremendous amounts of loss. Like him, in hardship we clung to God’s promise: “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten” (Joel 2:25). This message has resonated deeply with us as we have seen restoration, healing, and redemption after years of turmoil where we didn’t understand the hurt and pain we carried.

Think with us about this: The farmer in this chapter of Joel has tilled soil, planted seed, watered, waited, and tended to what grew. He harvested and carried his hard-earned bounty to the storehouse, into a place he thought was safe, only for it to be destroyed. This would have been devastating. It could have meant starvation for his family. He would have been asking God questions like we all do in a season of loss.

God, where are You?

What are You doing?

Why would You let something grow only to take it away?

Will You provide where we now lack?

What if there’s not enough?

Life has trouble. The locusts will eat. Suffering and loss will come. But Jesus tells us, “Take heart! For I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). We have found that God is always up to something, even in our hardship.

Here are the two things we know He’s up to when we face loss and devastation: When life yields hardship instead of harvest, God is either supernaturally bringing something deemed useless back to its full potential or He is planning to offer us a greater yield in a new season that makes up for our current lack.

Where do you see God’s fingerprints on your life right now, even in the hard parts? How might the setbacks actually be setups?