rending our hearts.

13 Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity. (Joel 2)

In desperate situations, anxiety overwhelms us; we do not know what to do, we do not know what to think. Hope has been extinguished, and the pain filters out any effort we could ever exert to forge ahead, discarding it by the wayside. We feel like we can't move on, and we don't want to look ahead. Our eyes are constantly kept closed, and the darkness evades our souls. When we summons enough courage to open them, we only see what lies behind: the annihilation and destruction of our lives.

In these bleak moments, it is natural to rend our garments, in anxiety, pain, and suffering. Our woe is too much to handle. However, in Joel 2, the prophet proposes that the people stop whining and complaining, feeling utterly sorry for themselves, and instead, to simple feel sorry. He suggests that they rend their hearts rather than their clothes.

In our lives, we need to stop justifying our pity parties by claiming injustice or maltreatment. We just have to consider the state of our hearts; perhaps, there's something there that needs apologizing for. Perhaps pride? selfishness? lack of love? jealosy? Joel says to return to God...