“Four things on earth are small, but they are exceedingly wise:
the ants are a people not strong, yet they provide their food in the summer;
the rock badgers are a people not mighty, yet they make their homes in the cliffs;
the locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank;
the lizard you can take in your hands, yet it is in kings’ palaces.” (Prov. 30:24-28, ESV)
According to the MN Historical Society, “On June 12, 1873, farmers in southwestern Minnesota saw what looked like a snowstorm coming towards their fields from the west. Then they heard a roar of beating wings and saw that what seemed to be snowflakes were in fact grasshoppers. In a matter of hours, knee-high fields of grass and wheat were eaten to the ground by hungry hoppers. The grasshoppers’ dramatic descent was just the beginning. For five years, from 1873 to 1877, grasshoppers destroyed wheat, oat, corn, and barley fields in Minnesota and surrounding states. In 1876 alone, grasshoppers visited forty Minnesota counties and destroyed 500,000 acres of crops.
Minnesota farmers tried many things to get rid of the grasshoppers. They beat the grasshoppers with flails. They dragged heavy ropes through their fields, and plowed and burned their fields. They raised birds and chickens to eat the grasshoppers. They dug ditches that they hoped the grasshoppers would be unable to jump over. They filled these ditches with coal tar and set them on fire, thinking that the smoke might drive away the hoppers if the ditches did not.
In later years, farmers made “hopper dozers,” which consisted of sheet metal covered in coal tar or molasses. They dragged the hopper dozers through their fields, catching grasshoppers in pans and then emptying the pans into fires. None of these efforts were successful.
Then in the summer of 1877, the grasshoppers left just as quickly as they had arrived. An April snowstorm damaged many of their eggs, which encouraged farmers to redouble their efforts to destroy the grasshoppers. The surviving grasshopper eggs hatched, but by August, the grasshoppers had flown away. Many attributed the end of the grasshopper plague to divine intervention, since Governor Pillsbury had proclaimed April 26 a state day of prayer, after receiving many requests to do so.
It was another decade before swarms of grasshoppers returned to Minnesota… but the grasshopper plagues of the 1870s left a mark on Minnesota culture, inspiring fiction like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937).”[1]
Locusts’ reputation for widespread devastation also gave impetus to the “swarming leaf gobblers” of the animated Land Before Time movies my kids grew up watching. Indeed, we’ve all heard sounds in trees we thought were locusts—creatures with wings that vibrate with increasing intensity. For example, many of us (like me before writing this post!) think cicadas are in the locust family. Actually, locusts are a type of grasshopper, while cicadas are cousins of crickets.
The locusts referenced in our passage are like the MN grasshoppers that are carried by the wind and perform mass destruction. They have a limitation in that they “have no [visible] king” or queen like bees. They are examples of cooperation, collaboration, and togetherness.
This is a direct challenge to the problem of isolation many of us struggle with, a problem an earlier Proverb addresses head on: “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.” (Proverbs 18:1, ESV)
The big lesson these little guys teach us in how they “march in ranks” has nothing to do with forced conformity or being a clone but is this:
Seek out community and your place on a unified team.
The NT certainly supports this wisdom with several admonitions like:
- “Bear one another’s burdens.” (Gal. 6:a, ESV)
- “Love one another.” (1 John 3:11b, ESV)
- “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Jesus Christ.” (Phil. 2:5, NIV)
Friends, look at the locusts and catch a fresh glimpse of the power of supernatural teams to bring, not mass destruction but, grace and peace. For example, a good church or para-church ministry seeks to build a team where each member understands and uses his or her gifts and, further, respects the place of every other member. Although the lesson here has wide application outside the church, especially as the body of Christ, we look to an invisible King to unite our energies.
How? By being with his people and leaning in to our callings! By, to whatever extent we’re able, being involved and committed to a local church or Christian mission that wants to see the unseen Head of the Church, Jesus, glorified and exalted.
You can’t do this as a self-focused individual or disengaged spectator. You can’t do this by sitting on the sidelines and being critical. And you certainly can’t do this by being a one-man or woman show. Effective, widespread kingdom work requires all of us.
Rather than being a plague, we can be an amazing force to bless our cities, towns, and nation! How could you and your family do this? How could your church or organization? How do you, your family, church, or place of business already do this?
What community or team has God called you to be part of? Where can you serve with integrity? Where do you best fit? What can you do to be more involved? What can’t you do? Learning from the locusts, what will you do?
Next week, we’ll wrap up this series, highlight its gospel themes, and take a look at one last essential piece of wisdom by observing the lizard.
[1] Slightly edited from Grasshopper Plagues, 1873–1877 First published: November 17, 2011; Last modified: April 29, 2015 MN Historical Society.