The cicadas have come, like a thousand sirens in the trees. I was ten last time they emerged from the ground en masse, littering the grass and molting on every tree. I was still wearing my brothers’ basketball shorts and running around sticking the bug shells on peoples’ shirts after church. I remember how we filled a pail for fishing bait and how they crunched under my bare feet. It felt like an Israelite plague. Then they died, and for nearly 13 years, we forgot them. We grew and aged and some of us kids have moved out.
Thirteen years later, and they have emerged from the ground again in two broods. According to USAToday, the last time these two specific broods emerged together, Thomas Jefferson was president. It was 1803, and Lewis and Clark were crossing the Great Missouri into the wild West. To them, it wasn’t Cicada Broods XIX and XIII, but just a wild song that lulled them to sleep under the stars.
That was 221 years ago, and how the West has changed—farmland cut, fields planted, cities built, trees axed. In fact, much has changed here in the 13 years since the cicadas came—policies enforced, prices jacked, countries bombed, babies killed. Like a cicada hatching from a 13-year slumber, I sometimes look around me and say, How the landscape has changed.
Maybe this is why I like to hear old people talk, because they have more than 13 years behind them. They can remember when the West was wilder and the prices lower. Because of that, they aren’t ashamed to shake their heads at the insanity my generation calls normal. With bowed shoulders from his rocker, my grandpa will look at me and say, How things have changed.
I imagine God’s people told their grandchildren the same thing. The older Jews could remember a land that flowed with milk from a thousand cattle and honey from wild bees. Sweet water had run under mighty trees. The Promised Land was, in fact, a tableland—a feast prepared by Yahweh himself.
But times changed, Israel rebelled, and man’s sin has always done damage to the creation around it. When Adam sinned, God cursed the farmland. When Adam’s grandchildren sinned, God sent locusts to devour their crops. “You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locust shall consume it,” said the Lord (Deut. 28:38).
“Tell your children of it,
and let your children tell their children,
and their children to another generation.
What the cutting locust left,
the swarming locust has eaten.”
~ Joel 1:3-4a
Sometimes, God sent enemy armies like locusts, who descended on and devoured Israel (Judges 7:12). They left the Promised Land razed, barren, and burned. The cattle were slain, the trees felled, and there was no milk or honey in Israel. I imagine an old man bent on his staff, surveying the rubble and saying, How the landscape has changed.
But the life cycle of a locust is blessedly short. Cicadas hatch, molt, lay eggs, die, and disintegrate into the earth until their children hatch 13 years later. Much can burn in 13 years, but much can be restored too, and this is God’s promise to his people:
“I will restore to you the years
that the swarming locust has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,
my great army, which I sent among you.~ Joel 2:25
In 13 years here at home, gardens have been replanted, couples have married, and babies have been born. I can’t help but wonder what the landscape will look like when the cicadas return. Will there be fewer children and trees and good policies? Or will my children be born and climbing the trees we planted as we live in the present reality of a creation being made new?
“You shall eat plenty and be satisfied
and praise the name of the LORD your God,
who has dealt wondrously with you…
You shall know I am in the midst of Israel,
and that I am the LORD your God and
there is none else.”
~ Joel 2:26-27
Sources:
Cicadas in Missouri 2024: Brood XIX sightings reported; see US map (usatoday.com)
Cicada Maps 2024: Where Two Broods Are Emerging – The New York Times (nytimes.com
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