I stood at the starting line packing wind pants and cold-weather gear, because that’s what March in the mountains is supposed to look like. Instead, I got a three-day heat wave. My plan had been to run the full 110 miles. I’d trained for months, prayed over it, circled the date on my calendar. But when race day arrived with a heat index instead of a wind chill, I made the decision to drop down to a shorter distance. To some of you that sounds sensible. To an ultrarunner, it feels like defeat.
That morning, standing among runners whose days also weren’t going as expected, I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me toward a question worth asking out loud: “Whose life has gone according to plan lately?” I doubt many hands would go up. If we’re honest, every one of us carries at least one regret, one wound, or one sorrow tied to something we did or something done to us. I know people who run to outrun trauma, addiction, abuse, or depression. I was one of them. I spent years running from God instead of toward Him, living in a way that honored neither Him nor myself.
I call those my locust years.
If you’ve ever seen what a locust swarm does, you know it doesn’t nibble. A single locust eats its own body weight in vegetation daily, and a swarm can strip a landscape bare within minutes, leaving behind famine where there used to be a harvest. That’s a fitting picture of what sin, addiction, or wasted years can do to a life. They don’t just take a little. They devour everything green and growing and leave the ground looking dead.
But God, speaking through the prophet Joel, promised something different for His people.
So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust, my great army which I sent among you. (Joel 2:25)
That word “restore” is the whole message. Charles Spurgeon put it this way:
“You cannot have back your time; but there is a strange and wonderful way in which God can give back to you the wasted blessings, the unripened fruits of years over which you mourned. The fruits of wasted years may yet be yours.”
God doesn’t hand us back the calendar. He hands us back the harvest. That’s exactly what the prophet Isaiah described when he wrote of God’s people receiving beauty in place of destruction.
To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified. (Isaiah 61:3)
I didn’t get my wasted years back. I got something better. When I finally surrendered my whole life to Jesus Christ, He didn’t just patch up the damage; He gave me a purpose I couldn’t have engineered myself, a joy I hadn’t earned, and a path I never would have dreamed up on my own. That’s not a formula I discovered. It’s Jesus, who keeps His promises:
Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)
Rest isn’t just the absence of striving. For someone standing on a scorched, locust-eaten field of regret, rest looks like restoration. It looks like God taking the very years the enemy meant to destroy and turning them into soil for something new. Paul reminds us that this isn’t a fluke or a coincidence. It’s God’s pattern for anyone who belongs to Him.
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)
You and I can’t get back the time that’s gone. But, when what remains is surrendered to God, it doesn’t have to be scarcity. It can be abundance, planted and tended by the same God who turns barren ground into bounty.
Prayer: Lord, I bring You my locust years—the ones I wasted and the ones that were taken from me. I can’t undo them, but I believe You can restore what they cost me. Thank You for meeting me in my weariness and giving me rest. Take what’s left of my life and make it fruitful for Your glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Happy Running!
Melissa Sharp is an ultra runner and running coach who has completed more than 100 marathons and ultra marathons. Melissa has learned how to keep running the race of life for the glory of Christ even though she endured decades of domestic abuse. Melissa is a survivor. Through her daily blog thejoyfilledrunner she inspires others to live in the strength of Christ.
