"Even now," declares the LORD, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning." – Joel 2:12

Today's Scripture Reading (March 20, 2026): Joel 2

I recently spent some quality time with my dentist. Unlike some, I don't like going to the dentist. I had one dentist tell me stories of patients who had fallen asleep while he was working on them. I can't imagine that happening. Everyone at the dentist's office seems to enjoy taking a perverse pleasure in the act of inflicting pain. I have heard people say they love how their teeth feel after a good cleaning, but I don't even enjoy those appointments. I have decided that these dental fans are commandment-breakers, focusing primarily on the one that says we should not bear false witness. My teeth feel fine before I get them cleaned, but afterward, it takes two or three days, and sometimes longer, for the pain to go away.

A while back, I read an article on Joel 2, focusing on verses 12 and 13, by Rev. Dr. Janet Hunt, and her opening quote came from her dentist. According to Rev. Dr. Janet Hunt's dentist. "If you look for the pain, you will find it.  Don't go looking for it." Apparently, this insane advice was given to her during a root canal.

Except, maybe it is not all that ridiculous. Sometimes we miss the purpose of our pain. Sometimes we even miss the cause of our pain. My doctor's technical diagnosis of my back pain is that it is "full of arthritis." I am not sure which medical school he went to, but when your back is "full of arthritis," what I want to do is take lots of pain drugs and watch old M*A*S*H reruns. However, according to my Dr., what I want to do is wrong. When my back hurts, I need to step away from my desk and go for a walk.

Pain is a constant in all of our lives. If we want to look for pain, we won't have far to go. And what we sometimes discover is that even the most well-adjusted among us suffer from emotional pain. We don't want to admit that, but it is true, and emotional pain often acts as a focus and a multiplier of our physical pain.

I am not saying that we don't need drugs to handle some of our pain. However, Rev. Dr. Janet Hunt's dentist might be right. If we look for pain, we will find it. So, don't go looking for it. And definitely don't focus on it. Have you ever noticed that if you are in pain, it gets worse at night or when you are alone? That is because it is at night and when we are alone that we start to focus on our pain. And when we do that, the pain becomes unbearable.

It is always dangerous to play amateur psychiatrist, but I think King Saul had an inferiority complex. When Samuel went to him to anoint him, King over Israel, this was Saul's reply. "But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me" (1 Samuel 9:21)? It might have been just humility, but I don't think so. Saul was young, and his tribe, the Tribe of Benjamin, had just about been wiped out in Israel's first civil war after the incident at Gibeah and the gruesome murder of a Levite's concubine a few generations earlier. Just imagine being Saul; a few generations ago, all of Israel took up arms against your ancestors, almost wiping them out, and now Samuel says that someone from that tribe will rule over all of Israel. Sometimes I wonder if Saul didn't get out of bed every day trying to prove that he really was worthy of being King; that God was right to place the nation's leadership in his hands.

Then, Saul has a chance to avenge Israel against one of their earliest enemies. Surely that would prove that he was worthy of being King. Surely that would ease his pain. The problem was that Saul's inferiority could not be solved by defeating the Amalekites. It could not be solved by taking their king, Agag, prisoner, proving that he was greater than the Amalekite King. But taking their possessions as his possessions could not ease his pain. Only reducing the distance between him and God could do that. Saul didn't understand the source of his pain. Instead, everything that he was doing was making his pain worse.

If only he could have heard the words of Joel - "Even now," declares the Lord, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning" (Joel 2:12). God asks Joel to understand that at least part of your pain is because you have wandered away from me. I know you have real pain in your life, but it is amplified because you are far from me.

We need to be reminded of the same message. Our pain is magnified because we have wandered away from God. It is this pain that we try to concentrate on during Lent, not so that we can increase our pain, but so that we can find the solution for our pain. We commit, with all of our hearts, to accept the invitation to return to God. And we do it with fasting and weeping and mourning, because in the midst of our sin, we have lost so much.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Joel 3