Plagues of the Heart

It seems like wherever I have lived in Sydney, it is always a fight to keep lawns, trees and shrubs healthy and free of pests.  Keeping turf free of weeds has been extremely difficult and nigh impossible.  Trees have had infestations of pests like stinkbugs, scale and white ants.  I found roots of languishing tomato plants full of chafer grubs.  I observed a careless council worker in a Bobcat gash bark off a gumtree when digging for a footpath and a flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos descend upon a tree and pluck off the tips of every branch with their beaks.  It is a constant battle to deal with the pests and problems that crop up on a daily basis.

One of the worst offenders for me are scale insects that cling like barnacles to the underside of leaves and dig into branches, robbing the plant of nutrition.  It seems pest oil does not prevent scale from forming, and Neem oil--while effective at killing scale--causes stress on the tree that makes leaves drop.  I have learned that I must physically inspect the branches up close, otherwise the scale remains and multiplies very quickly.  It is a good thing the tree is small, for lifting up all the leaves to scour for scale is a time-consuming and imprecise process.  It is one of those jobs that is never done because the scale keeps coming.

Today I read the passage where king Solomon prayed during the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem.  With all my experience with pests, Solomon's prayer in 1 Kings 8:37-40 caught my attention:  "When famine or plague comes to the land, or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, or when an enemy besieges them in any of their cities, whatever disaster or disease may come, ³⁸ and when a prayer or plea is made by any of your people Israel--each one aware of the afflictions of his own heart, and spreading out his hands toward this temple--³⁹ then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Forgive and act; deal with each man according to all he does, since you know his heart (for you alone know the hearts of all men), ⁴⁰ so that they will fear you all the time they live in the land you gave our fathers."  Solomon drew a correlation between famine, blight, mildew, locusts, disaster and disease and the afflictions or "plagues" of his own heart.  When people were afflicted by pests or enemies, they were to cry out to the LORD who  knows the hearts of mankind would hear and deliver them.

God was well aware of all the problems people in Israel faced from famine, grasshoppers that consumed their crops and invading enemies--as well as the plagues of greed, selfishness, pride, lust and all manner of sin in the heart.  Scale is a pest that can be seen by looking closely, and we need wisdom and insight from the LORD to recognise the plagues of our own hearts.  Plagues are destructive, and without strong intervention plagues spread.  Even as people under Law were to speak to priests to inspect potential plagues of leprosy that broke out inside their home, so we are to humble ourselves before God and repent of the plague of sin that crops up day by day in our hearts.  While scale can be easily scraped off the underside of waxy leaves, we cannot purify ourselves from our plagues within.  We need the LORD to cleanse, forgive and deliver us from sin's power and influence, and as we are faithful to do this we walk in the fear of the LORD.