“Steep your life in God-provisions”
When I go out for a walk this time of year, the sides of the road are full of dead grasses and wildflowers from the summer. The fact that they are dead does not make them worthless however. They are a storehouse of food for small mammals and birds who eat the seeds as long as they are available. If you watch carefully you will see some of the little birds who are fed by the wild places in your neighbourhood.
One of these wild plants is Goldenrod. It grows long leafy stems in the summer and then bursts into bright yellow blooms towards the end of summer. By late fall the flowers have gone to seed and look like poofy fluff on a stem. Little birds like goldfinches, juncos, pine siskins, and chickadees eat Goldenrod seeds.
One thing you may notice if you are looking is that quite often goldenrod stems will have a swelling somewhere in the top half of the stem that looks like a marble or ping pong ball got stuck in it. If you cut that swelling open, you just might find a little creature in there.
A certain type of fly spends its life with Goldenrod. It is named the Goldenrod Gall Fly. The female lays an egg on the goldenrod plant, usually around a bud and when that egg hatches, the little larva chews its way into the stem of the plant and sets up home there. It produces a chemical that makes the plant grow strangely in that spot. A hard outside shell forms and inside it grows lots of tissue that the little Gall Fly larva enjoys eating. When the weather starts getting colder, the fat little larva settles in to sleep away the winter.
In the early spring, it wakes up and chews through the gall to create an exit tunnel, although it leaves the outside layer in place like a little closed door. Then it turns into a pupa. By the time new goldenrod stems have started to grow, a little fly emerges from the pupa. The fly finds the tunnel to the outside and pops out of the little home it has lived in all winter. You can see the exit hole if you find an old goldenrod stem in the spring.
The Gall Fly is a pretty little fly with patchy brown and white wings. It will only live for a couple weeks – just enough time to lay a few eggs on the new Goldenrod stems and start the cycle all over again.
Of course, some of these little larvae become food for woodpeckers and chickadees, and sometimes if you open a gall, you may find a wasp or beetle larva in there instead of the Gall Fly larva since we live in a world that finds ways to take advantage.
But isn’t it amazing how this world works: how abundantly the wild grasses feed the little creatures! Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of this by putting our phones down, and instead of going shopping and seeing all the things we think we need, going for a walk and seeing how God provides for all of His creatures.
“What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.”
Matthew 6:30-33 MSG
Article & photo by JS.
