They appear every mid-May. You’re enjoying a nice spring day outside—the flowers are blooming, the trees are leafing, and the temperature is perfect.
Suddenly, a cloud of gnats swarm your face. Why does it have to be your face? Why couldn’t it be the bottom side of your tennis shoes? Why are they expressing irrepressible adoration of you? Why couldn’t they focus on the host of dandelions overtaking your yard?
The manifestation of gnats in your ears and atop your balding head cause your thoughts to go elsewhere, leading to the ultimate question: Why gnats?
The answer is found in Genesis 3:17-19: “Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Thus, we face gnats. Gnats galore.
When Adam and Eve sinned, God declared a curse upon the ground. The expanse of the curse is much larger than the 1 by 1 square of actual ground upon which Adam happened to be standing upon. The word ‘ground’ is also used to describe the entire earth upon which we live. That earth includes toiling, which indicates sorrow and heartache. It’s a world filled with thorns and thistles. It involves sweat. It ends in death. Makes you kind of wish you lived on Pluto instead, doesn’t it?
Romans 8:22 puts it this way: “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth until now.” I’ve never gone through childbirth, but I hear it’s a tad more painful than heartburn.
Where is peace in all this? I chuckle at the well-meaning folks who want to save the ecological world. It’s not their world. They’re just living here for a minute amount of time. Their footprints here are so small a gnat couldn’t even land on it, assuming gnats ever took a second to land anywhere except in people’s ears. It’s God’s world, and He has pronounced it cursed.
He also promises to end it. From Revelation 21:1: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth passed away…”
His Scripture goes on to describe some aspects of this new creation in Revelation 22:1-2: “Then He showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming down from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of the street.” More description follows, then verse 3 states this: “There will no longer be any curse.”
Meanwhile, back in midwestern Illinois, gnats prove the curse by showing up, causing myriads of folks to barricade themselves in their homes.
We can live in peace with our cursed world. That peace stems from us knowing this world is cursed. Our God declared it so. There will be no end to any of the menaces this natural world foists upon us. I’m certain whatever years I have left here will be filled annually with the coming of the gnats. I’m as certain there will be well-meaning folks toiling futilely to rid the world of gnats. They’d serve the world better by getting rid of telemarketers.
We can find peace in that. Instead of attempting to concoct a gnat-destroying spray, let’s simply look forward to the promise found in God’s Word. A new heaven and new earth are coming, and they will be perfect in every way. I will inherit the pleasure of dwelling in that perfected universe for all of eternity. The terrorizing time of the gnats will be no more.
Feel free to join me. Find peace with God, and you will find peace with His world. Even when the gnat hordes come.