Locusts

A weird title for a blog you may think - and you would be right. In the reading I've been doing about mental health and theology, its an image that crops up again and again. In the book of Joel there are many references to locusts - there is a promise, that one day, God will repay the years the locusts have eaten. There have been a lot of disagreement between scholars about whether these were literal locusts who had eaten crops, or, in the way the verses are often used now - whether it is the promise that God will restore the years that have been eaten away by pain and suffering. The idea that, whether in this life or the new earth - what we go through will never be in vain. I have often found myself referring to those years when I was so ill as 'lost'. The weeks that passed me by when I was trapped inside my head, the darkness. I'm longing for the day when those lost days, weeks months and years are restored.