Day of the Locusts

“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.” Joel 2:25

Very few films stay with me, but the 1975 film, Day of the Locusts, is one that I have never forgotten. The film is about three wannabes and desperadoes who are sucked into the Hollywood system of sycophants, diggers, and parasites. They listen and fall victim to Hollywood’s sirens: glamor, money, fame, sex, and adoration.

I want to say that I have never succumbed to such voices, that I never “crossed to death's other Kingdom,” (T.S. Eliot) but truth be told, I have wasted many of my sixty-six years. Those years nearly cost me my children and my wife, who will tell you that I not only changed spiritually but physically—my eyes were vacuous gray, my skin jaundiced-like.  Satan had his way with me. Locusts ravaged my life and the lives of my family. 

How does one get to a place where nothing matters but the satiation of selfish appetites? It begins with seemingly inconsequential sins. In Bruce L. Baker’s review of The Screwtape Letters, he asserts that Lewis cleverly demonstrates that “big sins start as small ones, but are predicated on the one, essential step to exalting the self, promoting pride as essentially the deepest, longest, widest abyss between God and His creatures. ‘Why use adultery when golf will do?’”  


Joel calls for repentance of our sins—little or big: "'Yet even now,' says the Lord, 'return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.' Return to the Lord your God . . . Who knows whether he will not turn and repent and leave a blessing behind him?" (2:12–14). When we repent and confess ALL sins, He will repay us for the years the locusts have eaten. To God be the glory, forever, and forever. Amen.  

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