Cicadas And The Second Coming
...from my back garden, day before yesterday...
Each year, I write down the date that I hear the first cicada sounds of that summer’s season. Everything in me wants to celebrate those moments.
The Bible says in Romans that all of creation declares to us God's invisible qualities.
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made”
Nature declares His attributes and power. This has given me great pause, over the years, as I try to figure out the message of each created thing.
The rainbow speaks of the promise of God to Noah. In my mind, the rainbow also reveals the complexity of a God who is full of seeming paradox. The rainbow speaks of justice and mercy, of law and grace. It speaks of a God who said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and then told a prophet to marry a prostitute.
That arch of color in the sky tells of a God who predestined me to salvation, and yet also infers life-altering significance to my choices. There can be no rainbow without opposites coming together, no prism of color without sunshine and rain present together, at the same time.
I know. We all notice those created things with the more obvious messages. Take rainbows (Genesis 9: 16) and eagles (Deuteronomy 32:11) and oak trees (Isaiah 61: 3), as examples of created things, each of whose meaning is plain. Oak trees - those trees of righteousness, silent sentinels to the fact that even what God plants can sometimes start very small and then take a lifetime to grow very large.
But my real obsession is with the Great Mystery of the Periodical Cicada. What. the. heck. can the cicada tell me about God?
We know that cicadas are harmless. They are nature's longest lived insect. I love the sound they make, so long as their numbers are not of plague proportions. They hatch, and burrow underground as nymphs, only to reemerge 13 or 17 years later, transform overnight into adults, bust out of their shells, reproduce and die.
What the...?? I'm stumped to consider how that, in my adult life, an entire brood of periodical cicadas were right there, under my grass, the whole time I was birthing my babies and teaching them to read. They were there, waiting, throughout the entire grueling process of my twin daughters receiving their driver's licenses.
Then that brood hatched, mated, burrowed their babies, and those bugs patiently waited while those same daughters got married, bought houses next door, and had babies of their own.
I mean….you can’t make this stuff up! The cicadas that mated the summer my daughters got their driver’s licenses, had offspring that emerged this summer. Now, as the season winds down, suddenly there little nymphs, right there, underground, right this moment. They will hatch when I am, like old.
“Oh yeah, life goes on / Long after the thrill of livin’ is gone”
Kinda creeps me out.
If you look closely at the wings of a cicada, you might see the letter "W" or the letter "P". An old wives tale states that if the emerging insects have the "W", then there will be a war, and if a "P", why then we will have peace of course. Never mind the fact that there have been wars somewhere in the world since both time and cicadas began.
I’m pretty sure all the cicadas this summer have two “W’s” on each wing. Oh, for dang sure. I do not care that it’s an old wives tale.
I can understand the confusion - since the Bible does say that creation declares the mind and ways of God. Those old wives were just reading a lit-tle bit too much into the whole cicada thing.
Weren’t they? I mean. Surely.
It’s an old wives’ tale, right? A tale they told as though it were gospel truth.
Come to think of it, I know some dispensationalist televangelists who are no different. I wonder what they'd say about these mysterious insects, belonging to the genus magicicada? I'd almost guarantee you they'd find a message in there somewhere about the Second Coming.
Some folks eat cicadas. There is an actual cook book entitled The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook by David George Gordon.
His book tells me that cicadas are nutty in flavor, and he gives me a recipe for Cicada Pizza. He also strongly recommends a certain fine wine to accompany the distinct insect flavors, but also advises me to drink it during the entire cooking process, well before I sit down to eat..."to fortify myself".
Hm. I've always believed that if sex or a meal or the people I’m with have to be much-improved by the wine, then it is time for me to get suspicious. I prefer to be in full command of my reason in the midst of any of those activities.
But back to Romans 1. Back to rainbows, oak trees, and the periodical cicada. My pastor-husband speculated, off the cuff, that the cicada might speak to us of God's persecuted, underground church. “Surely the cicada's message can't be that obvious”, I scoffed to myself. Though it is a thought.
The poor man was just indulging one of my artsy-fartsy questions. He has given me other ideas and other (better) answers to random questions, sometimes even saying things that felt accurate and even profound.
So I have no reason to question his intuition on insects, but I do question it.
However, until I can come up with something better, the Preacher's best guess will have to stand.
What an enigma. Each thing in creation - the Bible says all of it - tells us something about God. Stars and even the periodical cicada have a message.
If you figure out what that message is, please tell me. I refuse to eat them until I know for sure.
