One Sunday morning last summer, I came around the corner to the coffee pot to find Sammy and Mr. Bill looking befuddled. When Sam saw me, she said the words squash bugs, and at once, I understood. Any gardener in July would.
“My zucchini plants were beautiful,” she said, “and just like that— gone.”
“I know. I’ve tried everything,” I said.
They had, too, but dish soap didn’t work, and neither did blasting the bugs with the hose. I told them to check under each leaf, because just when you think you’ve ousted them, they’ll lay hidden eggs. Bill said he uses a knife to scrape them off, and I’ve tried duct tape myself; but the squash bugs had lived on, until they ate our plants down to a withering bundle of brown leaves.
“I’ve finally resorted to squashing every one I see,” I said. “I pick it off the plant and step on it.”
I call it ‘Battle of the Squash’— probably because it makes a little tribulation sound like something out of a history book. But it was surprisingly heartening to know I wasn’t fighting alone. And while we are not all gardeners of zucchini, we are all gardeners in the kingdom, and for all of us, there’s a battle to be waged. For all of us, there’s sin eating our leaves. Its desire is for us, to devour us, and if we don’t realize that, we’ll wake up one morning to a withered heart that was eaten in the night.
I’ve tried killing my sin many ways, just as I’ve tried killing squash bugs— ignoring it, brushing it away, hosing it with my own concoction of self-righteousness. But when it comes down to it, sin must be met one bug at a time. It must be plucked and squashed, then plucked and squashed again, and even then, there are always more eggs ready to hatch.
In The Mortification of Sin, John Owen wrote:
“A man may beat down the bitter fruit from an evil tree, until he is weary; whilst the root abides in strength and vigour, the beating down of the present fruit will not hinder it from bringing forth more.”
What is true in the mortification of squash bugs is true of sin. It is too mighty a foe for one gardener. So I need fellow gardeners in the fight, yes— but more than that, I need a Gardener who can walk among the rows of my heart and prune every pest. Jesus squashes my sin under his own heel, and then he does it again and again— and he will do so until the last bug is dead, and fruit fills the vines to the praise of his glory.
“If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers… Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.” ~ John 15: 6, 4-5
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