Japanese beetles and the mercy of God

 I hate Japanese beetles with an ungodly hatred.

When I see them gnawing on my plants, forcing their stupid, elliptical, black bodies of destruction into what was, a few hours ago, a gorgeous rose just beginning to shyly unfurl, I feel physical distress, heat boiling up in my jaw and nausea in my throat.  The back of my neck and my arms prickle as I remember the feeling of their tiny barbed legs between my fingers when I have sometimes desperately reached to pick them off and crush them.  My head literally pounds, my heart races and my breathing accelerates.  I run for the garage to search for a cure.

Neem oil does not bother them a bit.

This is a rose leaf after Japanese beetles savaged it.

A cluster of Japanese beetles ravages what was recently 

a glorious white chiffon Rose of Sharon blossom.

One day, in a panic, since nothing else was working and Japanese beetles were swarming thick on a defenseless potted rose, I grabbed a can of Cutter aerosol insect repellant, the kind you spray on yourself before you go out into the deep woods.  I sprayed the rose with Cutter until liquid trickled down in rivulets.  The beetles left, but the next day most of the leaves on the rose turned crunchy brown. 

And this is the thing.

It is very hard to kill only the Japanese beetles.  When I try to kill them, I am always at risk of killing something else along with them.

Last year, the potted tomato plant on my deck grew large and lush, but did not produce any tomatoes.  When I told my dad, he asked, "Do you have any bees?"  As far as I could tell, all the bees were in the front yard with the zinnias, so we carried the tomato pot around to the front and let it sit among the zinnias for a few days (much to the consternation of our HOA administrators).  We moved it back to the deck, and it grew one tomato.

This year, I tried to plant a row of pollinator plants along the back of the deck, to help the tomatoes along.  Trouble is, it has been a battle trying to protect the flowers from slugs, snails, and Japanese beetles (and careless landscapers who nearly killed the whole row with mulch and turbo blowers, but that is a different story).  There are products, insecticides, which would kill the beetles.  But if I use them, they will kill the bees, too, and the dragonflies and the butterflies.  Since the whole purpose of the flowers is to bring pollinators to my tomatoes, I cannot take an action that would kill the pollinators.

So what does one do?  I read forums of what others do, and they say, over and again, you can't get rid of Japanese beetles.  You just have to figure out how to mitigate the damage. 

While I garden, I ruminate, and this is perhaps why I love gardening.

When I battle Japanese beetles, I sometimes think about God, and sin, and how very much God hates sin.  God hates sin because of what it does to people, His Creation, just the way I hate Japanese beetles because of what they do to my garden.

And yet, I have to let the Japanese beetles go.  I cannot attack and lay them waste, or I will devastate the rest of what I am working to accomplish.  This is not to say that I ignore the beetles, only that I will not be completely eradicating them any time soon.

Similarly, God is patient, waiting for the right time to eradicate evil. He allows it to exist temporarily, because it would damage His other purposes if He were to wipe it out immediately.

Jesus told a parable about this in Matthew 13:

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in a field.  But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.  When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

The owner's servants came to him and said, "Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field?  Where then did the weeds come from?"

"An enemy did this," he replied.

The servants asked him, "Do you want us to go and pull them up?"

"No," he answered, "because while you are pulling up the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time, I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn."

Matthew 13:24-30 NIV

Why is there evil and suffering, sorrow and pain? Because the enemy of God planted a selfish, God-doubting thought in the mind of Eve, and she acted on it, and Adam joined her, and sin has plagued the world ever since.  God will eradicate sin at just the right time, but because He is loving and merciful, and wants to give many, many people many, many opportunities to be saved, He is waiting patiently.  When God destroys sin, He will also necessarily destroy all those who cling to sin, who insist on wrapping up in it.  This is why God waits so patiently for people to turn from sin and come to Him for freedom and cleansing.  "The Lord is not slow in keeping His promises as some understand slowness.  He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance," 2 Peter 3:9.

The mercy of God waits, and mitigates the troubles of His children with the presence of His Holy Spirit and the power of His perfect promises.

They say you can hand-pick Japanese beetles off your beloved plants.  You're supposed to do it at dawn or dusk, and carry a bucket of soapy water to drop them into.  To me, this is an overwhelming and unpalatable chore.  So many beetles, so full of sticky prickles between my fingertips, and a host of them are on the top of the crepe myrtle tree where I could never reach or climb.  I do not go that far to take care of my plants.  But God goes to all lengths to help us escape the power of evil.  He is never overwhelmed, exhausted or discouraged.  Though He waits, He constantly mitigates.  This is the nature of our wonderful heavenly Father.  May we praise Him forever.