Learning from Locusts

Meet the wise locust:

“[24] Four things on earth are small, but they are exceedingly wise…
[27] the locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank…” (Proverbs 30:24, 27, ESV)

What are locusts?

Locusts are a type of grasshopper. But they aren’t just any old grasshopper; they do something pretty interesting: they swarm. Like a swarm of bees or a flock of birds or a school of fish, they gather in a large group and all work together. They can swarm in the millions of grasshoppers!

Why are the locusts praised in the Bible?

Why are we encouraged to consider their example? What do they do well that we could learn from?

Proverbs specifies this admirable trait: “the locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank.” The writer here is talking about how they swarm. And he says, in swarming, they’ve learned to do something very important: Even though they have no mighty king, they’ve learned to work together, and together they are powerful.

One little grasshopper can’t do much, but millions of grasshoppers working together can march across a country as an unstoppable force that changes the whole landscape.

So what do we learn from locusts?

We can learn from locusts, then, the power of working together. Separately, we are weak and vulnerable, but together, we can be strong. And this truth is part of why we gather together as a church each Sunday and why we go to community groups throughout the week: Because we need each other. We need a team. We’re better together. By ourselves, we won’t get very far. But together, if we work together like the locusts, we can be very strong.

The Apostle Paul says this very thing in Ephesians 4:11-16. He says the church is like a body that is helped when all the different parts work together. A body has many parts: hands, feet, eyes, nose. By themselves, they’re not very powerful. (Imagine a foot by itself!) But if all these different individual parts work together, there is great gain! They all help each other out. They all assist and build each other up.

And that is our lesson from the locusts: We need each other, and we’re better together! 

So, let’s stick together, through thick and thin!

Amen.