Miscellaneous: Insects
Bad Bugs
TAILS: While we are on the theme of curses that can also be blessings, let’s look at those nasty bugs that eat up our precious gardens. Is there something redemptive about bugs, too?
In a sense, yes. They tell us, “Unless you make a drastic change in your gardening approach, you are wasting your time. Your produce will have little flavor, will spoil easily, and won’t nourish you as you would like.”
Years ago I ignored this message. I saw cabbage moths and other insects all over our new garden. Thinking I just had to “put up with them” I continued to water and weed for weeks and weeks. At harvest time we threw out the lettuce because it was bitter. The bugs finished up the cabbage. The tomatoes had little flavor and the string beans tasted like cardboard. I had a lot to learn.
Like the weeds, those “bad bugs” have a commission from Above—seek out and destroy sick and weak plants. While animals and people prefer healthy plants, insects and diseases thrive on unhealthy ones.
Insects’ antennae are equipped with special organs that can sense infrared frequencies. When a female moth emits pheromones in the infrared spectrum, a male moth senses this and determines if she will be a suitable “mate”. If he “likes” her he hones in on that pheromone and follows it, though she may be miles away, like a pilot follows a signal from a radar beacon.
Scientists have discovered that plants also emit pheromones that insects “see” as food. But, strangely, only sick plants emit them! If insects do try eating a healthy plant they don’t have the proper enzymes to digest them and often die.
HEADS: This lesson is HUGE! I hope you catch it. When our hearts are sick with bad attitudes, we too can attract trouble—from many directions. Let’s pray for that clean heart and right spirit in Jeremiah 36:26. See also Exodus 15:26.
