There they were, literally thousands and thousands of grasshoppers swooping right down in front of us! I’ll never forget that day: My brother Dave and I were on a motorcycle ride with beautiful Lake Henshaw off to our right and lofty, wooded Mt. Palomar just beyond the lake.
Seemingly out of nowhere came the locusts, behaving like kamikaze pilots, dive-bombing us. All we could do was keep going and hope to pass through this black cloud of insects. We did — with a plethora of locust-guts on our helmets and shirts to prove the invasion was real!
The fascinating thing to me as I think back to this invasion was how these bugs, whom Solomon tells us “have no king” (i.e. no leader, Proverbs 30:27) flew in perfect unison, making this seemingly perfectly coordinated attack. In fact, I read recently how… “Each individual locust knows its place and is content to do the task for which it was created. Such discipline prevents jockeying over the position that would make the formation of locust swarms impossible” (Table Talk, 10/16/15).
There is a fitting application for us, a lesson to be reminded of from these bugs: God wants us to learn to be content with where He has placed us (in the church and in the world), thereby avoiding envy and jealousy of other people’s station in life.
Since grasshoppers “succeed” because they are happy to be where their Creator has placed them (I don’t speak grasshopper, but they seem happy and content to me!) — and they “have no king” — imagine how much more successful we can be under Christ’s kingship if we are content with where
He has placed us!
Like so many other disciplines in the Christian life, contentment is an acquired skill, an attitude that is nurtured through use!
Even the great apostle Paul had to learn about contentment (Philippians 4:10- 13). Our confidence lies in this fact: God Himself has hand-made each one of us (Psalm 119:73 )! We, therefore, have a purpose; we therefore can expect to be led by our Creator in accomplishing wonderful things with our lives!
BTW: Whenever I mention finding our God-given purpose in life, people always, quite naturally, want to know what that purpose is. If you are asking this question, I recommend you read Rick Warren’s wonderful book “The Purpose Driven Life.”
