WHAT ABOUT THOSE GRASSHOPPERS?

WHAT ABOUT THOSE GRASSHOPPERS?
Wednesday, May 6, 2020 by Leona Choy

The Bible has much to say about locusts (grasshoppers) both literal insects and the term used metaphorically for the enemies of God's chosen people or for “swarms of catastrophes” that befell them. In the biblical record, God acknowledges they came from Him—He sent them on His people!

What was the purpose? God said He was allowing such things as grasshopper-encounters to bring His wayward, rebelious people to repentance. The God of love wants us to return to Him—for good and not evil, for a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11) “[Heavenly] Father knows best” but we seem to persist in going our own way until some calamity befalls us. Then we start to think seriously.

Locusts are referred to in a negative way from Genesis and Exodus through First Kings, Judges, Joel, Amos, Nahum, Jeremiah, Proverbs, Psalms, and Second Chronicles with their culmination in Revelation chapter nine. Why grasshoppers? I really don't know. Perhaps to show us that such small, insignificant things, cumulatively, can cause tremendous devastation?

In the midst of stories about grasshoppers, one shining promise of hope stands out in Joel 2:25 26. “Then I [the Lord God] will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you, and you shall have plenty to eat and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; then My people will never be put to shame.”

How can the entire agricultural landscape that was literally ravished, consumed, eaten up, and digested in a grasshopper's stomach still be “given back to us”? Let's leave those details up to God who is in the miracle business. If He says He can do it, I believe Him.

Other versions of the Bible translate “make up to you the years the locusts have eaten” as “restore to you, repay to you, give you back what you lost, recompense you, and make up for.” Who of us doesn't have some past actions or thoughts that we regret? In some cases literal years have been wasted, years squandered, time and opportunities lost that seem irretrievable, unrecoverable. They are eaten up and consumed. Period. End of story? Not so, according to God!

We may think that the COVID-19 virus is like grasshoppers gobbling up a precious slice of our lives. What does Jesus want us to learn from the past--so far--several months of isolation?

God promised to repay, to give back what was lost, to make up to us if we repent. The returns we receive might not be exactly in the same kind. The new normal may be far different in many respects from life as we have known it. The new paradigm into which we will step after we can be out and about again will more than likely be better in greater measure than what those insects originally ate and what went through their digestive systems.

Let's not relegate actual plagues of grasshoppers to history. They were projected into the future as part of the prophetic declaration often quoted in 2 Chronicles 7:7 about “...if my people...will humble themselves...I will heal their land....” Verse 13 just preceeding gives us the context and the condition. “If I [the Lord] shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people,”

Could this be where we are right now? I draw no conclusions. Jesus often declared, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” The following is from today's breaking news: BILLIONS OF MASSIVE DESERT LOCUSTS ARE PRESENTLY SWARMING IN EAST AFRICA: “The finger-length insects block out the sun in an area 37 miles long and 25 miles wide in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia but are likely to spread further. Thought to be caused by increased frequency of cyclones in the Indian Ocean, the second wave is expected to be 20 times worse....”

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Comments

Dottie From Danbury At 5/7/2020 7:43:50 AM

To think I was just videochating with my friend in Nairobi, Kenya, last Sunday! Does he now have to contend with both the corona virus AND locusts? Forsooth!

Reply by: Leona Choy

Yes, that's 2 out of 3 judgments listed in the prophetic v.13 before v. 14 call for repentance in Chronicles. The news reports mention the difficulties in treating the COVID patients now.Today the 7th is a National Day of Prayer and we should also include other nations.

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