PETS OR PESTS?

A few more thoughts about those noisy, nuisance grasshoppers. Primarily they destroy by eating. I can't seem to find a single redeeming quality about them. God used them to get the attention of His people in Old Testament times and then left them, and us, with a positive promise of restoration in the face of impossibility.

In our day and in our lives we also encounter grasshoppers of a personal nature. They come to us in the form of habits that eat up our time, consume our energy, and cause us to squander our opportunities. We may think we can domesticate them and make them pets. At least my best friend Dot and I in our childhood days, probably as kindergartners, tried to do that. We would capture a few large specimens and put them into what used to be cigar boxes back in the Depression era, the late thirties of the past century.

In those days it was common for men to freely smoke cigars, probably imported from Cuba, and they would buy cigars by the wooden box. When emptied, they were great for all kinds of things like holding our crayons, our favorite rocks, baby frogs, and other kid-collectibles. Some people even used the boxes to make homemade guitars.

Dot and I used the boxes for houses for our personal grasshoppers. To this day I remember that I called my hopper King Edward and Dot called hers Habana. My guess is that those were brands of cigars back then! We punched holes in the lids for air and played out our own dramas with the hoppers. We fed them greens, laughed to see their almost human looking faces and watched them “spit” like tobacco. We got emotionally attached to our pets and were reluctant to let them go, although most often they hopped right out of the boxes when we peeked at them.

We can't domesticate grasshoppers. They persist in doing what they do—devour and destroy what is not theirs. We can't make pets out of our wasteful habits however attached we have become to them or to our time consuming, trivial pursuits. Each of us knows what they are in our own lives—the useless things that occupy our days and months and years that we wish could be redeemed. If we believe God's lavish promise, in His love and mercy they can be redeemed!

In my most recent book that has just rolled off the press,
 Psalms of My Harvest, is my poem below: 
“Hungry Grasshoppers.”

It wasn't a ferocious monster

of insatiable appetite

that wantonly gobbled up

the best years of my life

and caused me tears of regret

and fears of wasted years,

it was grasshoppers—

insignificant time consumers:

grasshoppers of trivial activity

devourers of hours

chewing up my worthwhile pursuits.

They nibbled noiselessly

squandering my days

posing no early threat and yet

they swarmed and stripped

and crunched and munched

gnawing into my precious time

destroying in their wake

all that they could chew

leaving me in a desolate daze

surveying the havoc

with stupefied gaze.

Can those expired years

be irretrievably consumed?

Are they long gone

through the digestive systems

or irksome insects?

Oh Hallelujah!

The God of the impossible

can reverse the ravages of time!

He Who created can recreate!

He Who made the new can renew

and regenerate! God Who breathed

upon primeval emptiness

and brought forth life can “restore

the years the locust hath eaten”

and MORE!