How many more days will we hear the rising and falling cicada crescendo in Savannah?  I’ve enjoyed that lazy low level hum every day this summer.  If I were more entomologically enterprising I’d go to some internet bugsite and learn a lot of stuff.  But that would expend more energy than I’m willing to invest.  Better to sit and listen to that soothing, rasping sound from my screened in second story box seat.

These locusts – that’s what we called them in Indiana – are comforting friends in their own way, serenading Savannah with their happy humming white noise, lurking just off stage from sunup to sundown.

Do the cicadas know it is Labor Day weekend?  Are they already winding down their oratorios?  Can they acknowledge the traditional end of summer?  Do they see us firing up the grill one last time, bidding adieu to summer vacation, greeting another season of college football?  Do they sense our dreams for cooler weather?  

Here’s one more reason why this pastor loves the cicadas:  they eventually outgrow their shells.  Sinking their claws into the bark of some tree and holding on for dear life, they burst into new life, transformed into a more robust version of bugness, leaving their old shell behind for curious children of all ages to behold.

Maybe these mostly invisible choristers are singing in anticipation of or in praise for that glorious moment of transformation. Perhaps the apostle Paul had the cicadas in mind, too, when he recognized that “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

Listen for their song.  Sing your own song.  Yearn for and believe in and sing about and claim God’s power to transform you and me and all creation through Jesus Christ.   I’ll see you in worship this Sunday at 8:45 a.m. or 11:00 a.m.

Creede Hinshaw