The Brood X periodical cicadas have made their presence clearly heard and felt to the south and west of my corner of southeast Pennsylvania these last weeks, but here there's been nothing on the scale of what's been true elsewhere. Paolo, whose Amy yesterday began posting some very fine photographs of the small-scale natural world, himself posted a picture of one of his buggy visitors a few weeks ago, and people have told me that the cicada's racket is a constant background of telephone conversations with folk in the affected areas.



They're not the locusts of the plague of Egypt, of course, and in fact do relatively little damage to the world on which they descend. But I've been thinking of them in that connection, and in connection with the great Malcolm Muggeridge who, though having enjoyed extravagant worldly success and acclaim as an author and a vendor of words -- Paul Johnson considers him, with Evelyn Waugh, one of the great masters of English prose in the twentieth century -- yet, in looking back over his life, called his autobiography Chronicles of Wasted Time. Like most of his work, it's informative and vastly entertaining but still the sense of having spent much of his time on trifles is strongly evoked.



We've all spent part of our time on trifles and on immediate and quotidian concerns and enthusiams. Some of us so much of our time in such trifles that conscience scalds at the memory. And such pursuits can lay waste to our time in the way that locusts ravage the land. But the Lord God remains faithful, and rich in blessing. And, of His abundant mercy and grace, has promised that He will, in the words from Joel 2, restore the years that the locust has eaten.



The hymn of Robert Bridges, later Poet Laureate, is based on that chapter of Joel.



Rejoice, O land, in God thy might,

His will obey, Him serve aright;

For Thee the saints uplift their voice:

Fear not, O land, in God rejoice.



Glad shalt thou be, with blessing crowned,

With joy and peace thou shalt abound;

Yea, Love with thee shall make His home

Until thou see God’s kingdom come.



He shall forgive thy sins untold:

Remember thou His love of old;

Walk in His way, His word adore,

And keep His truth for evermore.