Locusts were the plague of American farms for decades and the eruption in the mid-1870s entered into legend. On 6th April 1877 John Pillsbury, the Governor of Minnesota called for a day of prayer to plead for divine deliverance from them. A few days later the insects rose up and left as inexplicably as they had come, never to return again.
When the Rocky Mountain locusts swarmed, they darkened the skies over vast swathes of the western and central US, from Idaho to Arkansas. One eyewitness said that such a swarm passed over Plattsmouth, Nebraska, in 1875 and was estimated to be 3000 kilometres (1,800 miles) long and 180 kilometres (111 miles) wide. When they finished feeding “You couldn’t see that there had ever been a cornfield there,” said one farmer. These big beefy locusts were considered the greatest threat to agriculture in the west, but the vast swarms vanished a few days after that day of prayer in 1877 and were totally extinct within 30 years. The last recorded one that was found alive was in 1902 by a river on the Canadian prairie.
Entomologists tried to learn everything they could about this species of locust – what triggered them to swarm, what they ate and how they reproduced? During that disastrous outbreak in the mid-1880s farmers fought back with every tool they could muster. When their pioneer wives draped blankets over the produce, the locusts simply ate them and went on with the vegetables. However, when they just disappeared they began to ask why.
An ecologist from the University of Wyoming discovered the answer. He and his students recovered 130 intact bodies of the Rocky Mountain Locust, the legacy of the swarm that had risen out of the river valleys of western Wyoming in the early 1600s; long before European settlers changed the face of the west. The analysis of the scattered parts in the ice on Knife Point Glacier confirmed that locust swarms passed regularly over the mountains during the centuries before their extinction. As he sought for further facts he came upon the works of Charles Rilley, an entomologist who spent much of the 1870s and 1880s searching for ways to kill the locusts. His conclusion was that ploughing and irrigation would destroy the eggs in their ‘permanent breeding zone.’ These were in the river valleys of Montana and Wyoming, where the incoming settlers chose to farm, but as less than 10% of the arable land was being cultivated he doubted if it would have a significant impact.
However, when he superimposed the map of the breeding grounds with the farming map, he found they were identical, and that when the farmers had unwittingly chosen to cultivate the area for wheat and hay in the 1800s they had inadvertently charted the locusts’ extinction.
It took 30 years for the prayer of John Pillsbury to be fully answered, but eventually it was, through natural causes. God can use anything from anyone to answer prayer, and will take His own time to accomplish it. Joseph had a vision, and no doubt prayed for its fulfilment, but his answer lay in rejection and a dungeon. His brothers sold him into slavery and his master’s wife made false accusations against him. Yet, after about 17 years, God answered the prayer and restored him and in one day fulfilled the prophetic dreams he had been given. It was through an apparent simple happening. Dreams were part of the mystic belief of that age and the Pharaoh had such an unsettling dream that he demanded interpreters to answer his unease. Joseph could interpret dreams but little did he realise that in answering that mystery it would lead to the salvation of his wider family. Just like the Montana farmers who, when they cultivated the river valleys, would, in years to come, save their own livelihood and hence their families. God’s ways are mysterious and marvellous.
As we go about our lives in the mundane execution of daily routine, earning an income and living through seasons of life, we can unsuspectingly answer our own prayers. The faithful servants of Matthew 25 were given various talents to trade. Without knowing or realising it, their lives would change due to the responsibility of the imparted talents, and their reward would be the consequential transformation of their lives. Their faithfulness to the task would unknowingly kill the locusts of dilatoriness, doubt, laziness, fear and self-preservation that could destroy the fruitfulness of life. The locusts of suffering, adversity, trial and temptation which can strip us bare of fruitfulness and a life-harvest can become just a memory as we extend our trust in the divine pleasure over our lives.
