The way of the cicada

on greatness and grace

Two weeks ago I noticed the discarded husk of lone cicada clinging to the brick walls of my home. Weird, I thought, moving absentmindedly on with my day. The next morning I sat in my living room, drinking coffee, scrolling through my news feed, avoiding my Bible and my workout, feeling guilty about both. The day was slipping away: I was wasting time and my inner critic was getting loud. I finally mustered the wherewithal to get out of my seat and stepped barefoot onto the front porch, only to turn right back around.

The ground was littered with cicadas, some dead, some awkwardly molting, some long gone leaving their translucent coppery shells behind. After thirteen years of waiting Brood XIX was beginning to emerge. The live ones looked grotesque with their bulging red eyes and unpredictable flight patterns. When they fell on their backs they buzzed helplessly, unable to turn themselves upright. They weaseled into my living room, squeezing through the crack under my front door that I keep forgetting to take care of. What was the point of this seasonal insect over-saturation?

When I finally stepped outside (with shoes), I was careful not to crunch the bugs littering the ground. My ears were inundated with the volume of their rising chorus. I felt stuck between the noise on the outside and the noise on the inside, an insatiable vacuum of shame screaming about my ever-evolving flaws. While I’ve grown past a certain scrupulosity that constricted me thirteen years ago in the last cicada season, I still struggle with that old bent towards proving myself to God, to others, to myself. When I’m able to put my feet up and read for a bit, able to afford a nice vacation every now and then, I wonder, am I doing enough?

Photo by Ashlee Marie on Unsplash

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The missionary William Carey famously said, “Expect great things from God, and attempt great things for God.” Though I don’t remember consciously hearing these words¹, the latter half of the statement accurately names much of the muscular faith emphasis I grew up around. As I read missionary biography after missionary biography in my childhood— stories of people like Mary Slessor, Amy Carmichael, Gladys Aylward, Hudson Taylor, George Mueller, etc.—an image grew in my young brain of what attempting “great things for God” meant. Compared to those religious giants, I wondered if I didn’t pick the hardest thing possible, choose the path of most resistance, smile glibly through suffering—was I really doing something great? If my life wasn’t daunting or unconventional enough for a biography, then was I really serving God well? A life like theirs seemed like a sure way to “attempt great things for God,” and the eager moralist in me put the emphasis on my ability to do those “great things.”

In the 2000s, catchphrases like, “don’t waste your life,” and “do hard things,” made the rounds in the conservative protestant evangelical circles I ran in, accompanied by inevitable undercurrents of comparison and guilt. Suddenly the worst thing possible loomed large and terrifying—how could you ever face God if you hadn’t been maximally efficient and courageous in attempting great things for him?! What if you didn’t do hard things, but chose something insignificant or, dare I say, easy? These were the unspoken questions I held, but didn’t know to how to validate.

Looking back, I wonder if the Carey quote became inverted in its modern cultural application into an if/then statement, a subversive form of deal brokering with God. “If you attempt great things for God, then you can expect great things from him.” Did radical self-sacrifice hold the power to force God’s hand? A different unspoken inversion took a form that was simultaneously more subtle and more insidious: “if you do NOT attempt great things for God, then you better watch out—he’s coming for you.” In either inversion, the impetus landed on the sinner to get himself out of the hands of an angry God, to curry his favor. It was a form of works righteousness that laid a heavy burden on its hearers, many of whom were naive and eager to prove something, like me.

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What does it mean to do “great things for God?” Does it always involve working a job “in ministry,”² never saying no to a request or a need, always running full speed into the darkness, never taking a break? Yes, Jesus says “if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”³ Yes, Jesus says that “if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.”⁴ And while injustice, discomfort, and sometimes even danger go hand-in-hand with the way of Jesus, isn’t doing great things for God usually a much more mundane experience? Doing the dishes, taking out the trash, cultivating curiosity, choosing forgiveness, leaning into repentance, confronting with gentleness, giving hugs, spending time to love and listen, putting words on the page and plants in the soil, and more. Such acts do not require anything impressive, just attentiveness, humility, and care.

“Whoever would be great among you must be your servant.”⁵

Last week as my I wrestled to pin my inner critic to the ground, working to understand my own visceral angst over not “doing enough,” it was the cicadas who gently rebuked me. These insects spent the past thirteen years underground, anonymously aerating the soil, patiently maturing until—at last! they burst into the land of the living in their final days, quickly shedding their shells to sing, reproduce, and then die. It is a strange life, but it is faithful, fruitful, good. There is no place for efficiency or the preoccupation with getting stuff done in the underground life of the cicada, only burrowing, breathing, waiting for the master’s call, “And God saw that it was good.”⁶ Their life is quite the opposite from mine, with my hurried urges to keep busy and prove my usefulness. Cicadas operate from a place of spacious trust even in the cramped underground. With instinctual wisdom they rest in knowing that when it is time to emerge, they will know. Until then, they wait.

After well over a decade of subterranean dormancy, Brood XIX is now singing their collective tune, the shimmering thrum of wings rising loudly from the trees as they make way for the next generation. It’s time to take my cues from them, to lie quiet under the loving gaze of the Maker. The way of grace is more about the vibrant how of following Christ than the rigid what. In another thirteen years I’ll probably need the same simple reminder again: be still, don’t rush, listen. True greatness is quieter than you think.

1. I really don’t know what Carey meant when he said this honestly. Carey is someone I have mixed feelings about. His Bible translations reached far, but his work came at the expense of the physical, mental, and emotional health of his wife and children.

2. I put this in quotes because because I believe ministry is a call for all Christians, not just those who work in pastoral positions. A job “in ministry” is not essential for validating the ministerial call, although it certainly can be a calling.

3. Matthew 16:24

4. John 15:18

5. Matthew 20:26b

6. Genesis 1:10