The Cutworm
Copyright 2023 Jamie Zenteno
First of all, I can’t believe I’m about to write about bugs. Worms no less, lol. However, if that’s what the Lord pressed upon me to pen today then that is what I’m going to write about.
This past weekend I was going through the garden looking for vegetables to pick or bugs that needed to be plucked off. Unfortunately, I found limp stems dangling over the edges of one of my pots. One pot of my onions had fallen victim to their arch nemesis – the cutworm.
Dozens of shoots had been half eaten and the innards were being hollowed out by the insect army. It was a good thing that Home Depot was on our list of places to go on Saturday so that I could acquire some sort of pest control.
Interesting enough, cutworms do not enjoy daylight. They prefer coming out in the darkness to attack the plants they’re feeding on. It will devour the stem until the entire plant is cut down. (Hence their little name … cutworm.) Depending on the severity of the infestation you have, the only ways to irradicate them is to pluck them off, apply pesticide for prevention, or transfer the plant elsewhere if there is anything left of it.
The symmetry falls parallel to our lives doesn’t it?
When we allow ourselves to succumb to the darkness of sinful natures, the attacks to our soul slip in under that dark covering. Before we know it, the life is getting sucked out of us and we find it hard to breathe or find an escape. On the other hand, perhaps it’s not the detrimental “bad sins” that are our weaknesses like an addiction or an affair. What if it’s something like anxiety, negative thinking, or even gossiping. Whatever isn’t peaceful, aligned with God’s word, or making us feel ashamed … those are our gauges to tell us something isn’t right.
Before we know it, sin can devour us just like the cutworms do. 1 Peter 5:8, tells us:
8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Don’t think for a second that he’s going after a few leaves of our soul. No. He wants all of is. He wants us to be consumed so much by sin that it destroys our lives and cuts us down completely.
Just like the solutions above for the cutworms, we too have some depending on the depth of our situations at hand.
We can pluck off the sin before it’s too bad. This means turning away from temptations and keeping ourselves accountable in area’s we may struggle in. That might include having an accountability partner to check in on us.
This also means being consistent in our prayer lives and keeping ourselves in fellowship with our Father and the word in our hearts. This is our safeguard – our preventative measures.
Lastly, it may mean changing our inner circle or making life changes to get us out of an unhealthy environment.
No matter what, I truly believe that God always makes things right even when they appear dire. There is a lot of hope packed into scripture. Yes, it sounds redundant in our overstimulated world. Yes, it might seem boring. But man, it’s simple.
So, I leave you with these scriptures today and tell you that I will for sure keep you guys in prayer if you keep me in yours.
Psalms 18:28 “You, LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.”
John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
And by the way . . . the cutworms are dying off and the onions are starting to thrive once more. A little effort goes along way.
