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Photo courtesy of The Matson Collection, The Episcopal Home

“A day of darkness,” as the prophet Joel (2.2) aptly described it, accompanies the approaching locust swarm. The locust cloud can be so thick (sometimes over a billion creatures) that the sky is darkened. Another darkness, a figurative one, is the famine that sometimes follows a locust plague, when crops have been devoured. Not at all formidable as an individual, the locust (above) exemplifies “strengthen in numbers,” often descending on an area in such a horde as to be virtually unstoppable. How people respond to such a disaster, however, plays a large role in determining how severe the disaster’s effects will be, so Joel tells us.