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| Beautyberry forms its fruit late in the season, food for the birds. Who thought of that? |
As predicted, the rain rolled in, Friday morning, about 4 AM. I went to the kitchen to make some coffee and saw a slug on the floor. Wet weather brings slugs or earthworms inside, but I usually see one brave slug. They are creatures of rot, but they also are very good at rasping away leaves and vegetables, so gardeners loathe the damage they cause.
If you wonder what is damaging your garden, go outside after dark with a bright flashlight and look over the plants and bushes. An interesting display of life will peep out from flowers and hang from plants. The daylight reveals the damage; the darkness reveals the pests.
The temptation to destroy all the pests is great but the effort is futile for us weak, dumb, and easily exhausted humans. I leave it to the counter-strike force, the beneficial creatures who feed on the pests. This summer I learned about many beneficial creatures and renewed my interest in ones I took for granted - like toads and spiders.
The rove beetles and cursorial spiders are especially interesting. They march across the land and devour pests. Unbidden by us, they are designed by the Creator to feed new generations of beneficial life by reducing the hordes of pests, just when we need them most. The greater the numbers of pests, the larger the strike force attacking them.
The numbers should amuse us. If we use man-made chemicals, the cost is increasingly painful and the results increasingly disastrous. If the beneficials do the work for us, they enjoy a boom in population and generations following who abide where the eating is good and the living is free.
I still have a few rose blooms that the aphids and sucking insects destroy, but they are just snacks for the beneficials waiting for their noxious arrival.
Isaiah 55:11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth:
- it shall not return unto me void,
- but it shall accomplish that which I please,
- and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
Pests arrive in the lives of Christian believers. Beside the normal trials of life are those special enemies who devote themselves to destruction. They are the Javerts (Le Miz) whose narrow view of the Law justifies their rampages. Some are Pentecostals always speaking about Jesus while serving their Father Below. Others are busy parsing the hyper-Mennonite rules of shunning that they amend according to their daily needs.
They never imagine this, but these pests do God's work in their malice. They help separate the good from the bad and open up new opportunities for the Gospel. The effective pesticide is not man-made. The sects of today think success lies in ejecting anyone who would stand up to their corruption and false doctrine, but the abusive leaders only set up new opportunities for the Word of God, which alone is effective.
The beneficial Word is not taught and therefore is seldom used. I gag when I read in a post, "The synod says..." The synod never says anything. The synod is not a person but simply a man-made organization that cannot obey its own rules and guidelines.
The Word never fails, which means - it is always successful. If someone knows and understands Hebrew, the concept should be simple: there is no difference between God's Word and God's will. Anyone who reads a decent translation can see the same thing.
The Word accomplishes God's purpose alone. Not Satan's. Not man's. Just God's purpose. Weed spray is very good against weeds...and flowers...and beneficial creatures. We have all seen great man-made ideas executed and creating all sorts of collateral damage.
The Word is bountiful in its positive effects. No one can even imagine the outcome of God's Word when proclaimed.
