Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
Joel was a prophet in ancient Israel who wrote in response to a catastrophic swarm of locusts that had devastated the land — crops destroyed, vineyards stripped, the food supply gone. Before calling the people to mourn and repent, he begins with this command: make sure your children know what happened. The phrase 'tell it to your children' was a familiar instruction in Israelite culture — stories of God's acts, both merciful and severe, were meant to be passed from generation to generation as living memory. The repetition here (children, their children, the next generation) emphasizes that this particular disaster should not be softened, forgotten, or quietly left out of the family story.
God, give me the courage to tell the true stories, not just the triumphant ones. Help me to be honest with the people who come after me about what the hard years were actually like — and about how you were present even when it didn't feel like it. May nothing worth remembering be lost. Amen.
We are very selective about what we pass down. The recipes, the funny stories from family reunions, the carefully edited version of how things went — these travel easily. The harder things, the years of loss, the moments God seemed absent, the time everything fell apart — those get quietly retired. Joel is asking for something different. He wants the locust year in the record. Not because pain is worth celebrating, but because a generation that doesn't know what locusts can do won't recognize the warning signs when the sky goes dark again. What story from your own life — the brutal year, the slow collapse, the thing you survived but rarely speak about — needs to be told to the people who come after you? Not posted, not performed, not packaged into a neat testimony. Just told, honestly, over dinner or on a long drive. The people who need to hear it are probably closer than you think. And the version they need isn't the one where you had it all figured out — it's the one where you didn't, and kept going anyway.
Why would Joel begin a call to national repentance by first telling people to remember and retell — what is the connection between memory and spiritual faithfulness?
What stories from your own life — especially the hard or painful ones — have you intentionally passed on to others, and what made you decide to share them?
Is there a risk in making suffering too central to the stories we tell — and if so, how do you tell the hard stories without letting them define everything?
How does the way a community or family remembers its painful past shape how the next generation approaches faith, hardship, and God?
Who in your life — a child, a younger friend, a mentee — needs to hear an honest story from your past? What has been stopping you from telling it?
Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.
Joshua 4:22
We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done.
Psalms 78:4
That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children:
Psalms 78:6
And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?
Joshua 4:21
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Deuteronomy 6:7
And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.
Psalms 78:8
Tell your children about it, And let your children tell their children, And their children the next generation.
AMP
Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.
ESV
Tell your sons about it, And [let] your sons [tell] their sons, And their sons the next generation.
NASB
Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.
NIV
Tell your children about it, Let your children tell their children, And their children another generation.
NKJV
Tell your children about it in the years to come, and let your children tell their children. Pass the story down from generation to generation.
NLT
Make sure you tell your children, and your children tell their children, And their children their children. Don't let this message die out.
MSG