A damaged ecosystem

The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox (Isaiah 11:7).

Have you ever wondered why God made mosquitoes? It’s a question that I’m tempted to ask whenever hordes of the little bloodsuckers chase me out of the yard back into the house. Mosquitoes can ruin an otherwise perfect summer’s day.

Sometimes we look at the world around us and wonder why things are the way they are. Why do my gardening tools get rusty? Why do dandelions take over my lawn? Life is full of frustrations, and sometimes we’d just like to know why.

Actually, the answer has been available all along. It is found in the pages of the Bible. In the beginning, God made everything perfect. There was no death. This boggles our minds—how could the ecosystem work if there is no death? Sadly, we were not permitted to find out because Adam and Eve quickly ruined things by sinning against God. Because they disobeyed God’s orders, the world was cursed. Now moths and rust destroy our goods. Now there are weeds and pain and death. Because of sin, the very laws of nature established by God have been corrupted, making the world a very different place than what was originally designed.

We regard mosquitoes as useless pests; we wonder why God created them. But in the beginning, mosquitoes were not pests—sin has changed them and their environment. When God originally made mosquitoes, they served an important role that sin has now obscured.

But there is hope for the future. The perfection that has been lost will one day be restored. The first time Jesus came to earth, He overcame the corrupting power of sin by His sacrificial death. The next time Jesus comes, He will remake the world as it was before sin ruined things. The laws of nature will be reset, as Isaiah tells us: The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. Imagine it—carnivores turned into herbivores. A world where there are no hunters or prey. A world where mosquitoes do not ruin a pleasant summer’s evening. That’s the world lost to us because of sin. That’s the world coming to everyone who loves, and trusts in, Jesus.