How a famine can bring restoration and plenty

I’m running along our country road, talking out loud to the Father I’ve come to know. “Talk to me about famine.” That’s what I say, for what’s on my heart this day is my own lean famine years.

For so many long, lonely years, I did not know this good, kind Father. Oh, I knew Him vaguely. Knew about Him, certainly. But I did not, in the deepest recesses of my heart where foundational beliefs are laid down, really know Him. Which caused a great and terrible famine in my life.

What I missed in the Years of Not Knowing was the conscious, daily joy and carefree delight of living as a child in the presence of the greatest Father that ever has been. Not only the biggest and mightiest and most powerful Father, but the kindest, gentlest, most patient, and most respectful; the kind of Father whose love never wavered, never changed. Never, ever ran out.

What I got instead was constant fear, unrelenting anxiety, self-reliance, self-effort, disease and, in the end, utter exhaustion.

Famine. Hunger. Starvation. Devastation. Lack.

A famine of the heart was deadly, wreaking havoc just as surely as a famine of grain. When the clouds turned to brass and the rain did not fall, hope-stalks would wither just as surely as the wheat in any field. Then doubts swarmed like locusts about the heart of the Giver. And the locusts stripped the life, leaving death.

What on earth (I wanted to know) was it good for?

Well, that good, kind Papa of mine, He reminded me of Joseph, his brothers and a famine that fell once upon a long-ago time. Those brothers, hate-filled, jealous. A terrible lie, an outrageous injustice, and the innocent sold…into slavery.

Then, years passing, and famine.

When those desperate, hungry men loaded their animals and began the journey to Egypt, they could not possibly have guessed what awaited. What was coming. What they were actually going to get.

They left hearth and home for the grain. But what they got was exposure (of their sin), then repentance and, at last, reconciliation.

Oh, and did I mention provision? All they could need and then more? Far past ‘enough’ to abundance.

It was the famine that sent them to Egypt. It was the famine that led to a Reckoning; the famine that brought them to Joseph.

That arid, dry road, f-a-m-i-n-e, with all of its starvation and lack, was the path that ended at the palace.

Now, you, and me. If you’ve experienced a famine in your life, don’t despair. What if it is the very route that will take you to abundance, to provision? To repentance, or full re-store-ation? What if that?

Instead of cursing your famine, embrace it. Receive it. Look up into His face and say, “Thank You.” He loves you, you know, and He’ll not waste your famine, not if you commit it to Him.

This God,my God, my kind and be-loved Papa, is well able to turn famine into plenty.

I know, for He’s done it for me.

“I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten…My great army, which I sent among you. You will have plenty to eat and will be satisfied. You will praise the name of the Lord your God Who has dealt wondrously with you. Then My people will never be put to shame (Joel 2:25-26).”