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Men and Grasshoppers

by Jerry Ousley  
6/24/2011 / Christian Living

During the summer when I'd spend a few weeks with my grandparents down on the farm, I had a way of making a little spending money. My uncle loved fishing and he also liked using grasshoppers as bait. He would pay me one penny per grasshopper. I'd grab a big quart jar from Grandma's shelf, get an old lid and punch a few holes in it to allow for air and go to work. I never made over twenty to twenty-five cents on these hunting excursions but hey, it was the sixties and twenty-five cents to a young boy was a small fortune!

But it was hard work. Those hoppers weren't always easy to catch. The older ones had wings and you had to sneak up on them just right in order to catch them before they took off. When they did I would watch where they went because they usually didn't fly very far. I'd track them down and before long there would be another trophy in my jar. Sometimes it would take an entire afternoon to catch twenty to twenty-five of those hoppers! My driving force was imagining all those sweet treats I could get for a whole quarter. Occasionally I'd contemplate saving the money until I had enough to buy something really special but usually once I had that quarter in my pocket it would burn until I spent it. After all, I didn't want a hole in that pocket; it could cause me to lose my future profits!

I can just imagine the fear that was going on in the heart of those grasshoppers as a looming shadow appeared over them. Even though I wasn't very big, compared to a grasshopper I was a giant and I could almost hear them saying, "Oh no! Which way should I go? How far can I hop? He's bending down, spread those wings and get out of here!"

Once in a while my cousin would be there with me. We split the profits and it meant double trouble for those old hoppers! He'd get on one side and I'd get on the other and it narrowed down which direction the grasshopper could fly. I know if I'd been a grasshopper and saw those two giants surrounding me I'd probably have a heart attack on the spot!

This fear was felt in the hearts of the men who went to spy out the Promised Land. You can read the entire story in Numbers 13-14. Twelve men went out and only two came back saying that they were able to conquer the land. The other ten were afraid of what they had witnessed. Here's what they said in Numbers 13-31-33: "But the men who had gone up with him said, 'We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.' And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, 'The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.'" Can you sense the great fear in the hearts of these men? Certainly the land flowed with milk and honey just as God had promised. But here they were nothing more than escaped slaves, not trained men of war, and this God expected them to enter the land and drive out its inhabitants? They felt like grasshoppers surrounded by boys. Just remember however that they identified themselves as grasshoppers, not the inhabitants of the land. Their fear began in their own hearts.

I suppose most of us may have been tempted to feel the same way. But let's just suppose that those grasshoppers had a secret weapon. What if they had an unseen force an Invisible God who was all powerful? Wouldn't that inspire faith, hope and encouragement in them? It should have. They had already seen the power of God. They had escaped some very impossible situations because God had fought the battle for them. But they couldn't see beyond the moment. In reality they didn't trust God. Even though they had already witnessed great miracles of deliverance they could not see past the giants of the land. Only Caleb and Joshua tried to encourage the people to get ready to take the land but crowd sided with the other ten. Because of this they spent the next forty years wandering around in the wilderness until that entire generation had died except for Joshua and Caleb.

We too are looking to take a land. Only it is a spiritual land. It begins by taking control of our own existence and ends by claiming our home in the Promised Land of Heaven. Yes there are great obstacles. Of course we have giants to face in life and we are tempted to view ourselves as grasshoppers in comparison to our foes but we must step out in faith knowing that our God will fight for us. Without Him we would certainly fail and the giants would catch us up in their bait jar. But if we keep our faith and trust in God He will make us vicious grasshoppers that need not be fearful when the giants loom over us.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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