 As we keep the Lenten journey, we follow Jesus in the way of the cross, sustained by the Scriptures and moving towards Holy Week as we follow through the purposes of God. Joel chapter 2 verses 12 and 13. Joel chapter 2 is regularly read at the beginning of Lent. And those of us who keep Lent in the traditional way beginning with Ash Wednesday, we know it quite well. And it's easy then to have a rather shrunken view of what Joel is doing or to get it wrong entirely, which is what happened a little while ago when the pandemic of COVID began. And some people were saying, there we are, we've got this pandemic. This is because we somebody somewhere has sinned. And quite often the voices that were saying that were actually criticizing people that they were criticizing anyway. And it was kind of a cheap way of saying, there you are, it's because of what you were doing that all this has happened. Life is usually far more complicated than that, as for instance, the Book of Job, to look no further, would make clear. Nevertheless, the Book of Joel is all about a terrible threat which has come upon the people of God. That there's been a plague of locusts destroying everything in their path, eating all the crops and the harvest. And people are seriously worried that if they can't have their crops as usual, they and their children are going to starve. So what's to be done? And what Joel is doing is not simply a pragmatic, oh dear, we better go back to God and say sorry for something or other. It's a retrieval of the covenant promises in Deuteronomy. As so often the prophets look back to the law itself, to those great covenant promises in Deuteronomy 26, 7, 8, 9, 30. Where God promises that if you obey my word, if you keep my laws, then things will go well for you. But if you turn away and do things all wrong, do the things which I commanded you not to, then there will be bad things which will happen. And that will ultimately end up, says Deuteronomy, in exile. But then in Deuteronomy 30, and this is what is echoed in the passage I read. We find God saying to the people that when all the bad things happen, then return to me with all your heart. And as Joel says, rend your heart and not your clothing. In other words, it's easy to make an outward gesture of penitence. Oh dear, how terrible. The traditional way of doing that was to render, but to tear a garment as a sign that you are penitent. He said what really matters is that your hearts need to be penitent. So it's a call for a heart depth of penitence. Much as Jesus himself would be calling for that heart depth of penitence. When he came into Galilee saying repent because God's kingdom is at hand. God is about to do the new thing which he'd promised. Therefore Jesus, picking up from John the Baptist before him, told the people to get ready through repentance, through turning away from everything that was getting in the way of God's will in their lives. And indeed Jesus in the prayer that he gave us, in the prayer we call the Lord's prayer, taught us to pray, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. In other words, there is a sense in which a little bit of Lent happens every day when we say the Lord's prayer. That turning to God ought to be something which we don't just do once a year when, oh dear, it's Lent so we better do it. Lent is a time of focusing what ought to be the habit of the heart anyway. A time of going through and taking time and thinking about things that might be going wrong in our hearts in our lives. And of coming back to God and praying for mercy, praying for a fresh sense of direction, praying for if it's needed a new start. It's good to have one season in the year which kind of formalizes that habit to make sure we don't get out of the habit. But the focus of Lent is not really on ourselves or if it is, it can become very depressing or inward looking or kind of wrongly introverted. The focus of Lent is actually on God himself because at the heart of this passage, return to the Lord your God because he is and then there are four adjectives, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That's the image of God which we all too easily lose sight of. And it's easy in Lent sometimes to think of God as being threatening or angry or terrifying. And so we repent for all the wrong reasons as it were. But the answer is no, it's because God loves you. It's because he wants the best for you. He is slow to anger and he is full of gracious and steadfast love. That's what we cling to and that's the thing that will sustain us through Lent. And so we pray, Almighty Father, give us a fresh vision of your steadfast love that we may turn from everything else, everything that's getting in the way of that and cling on to you for this whole journey of repentance and faith in Jesus' name. Amen.