The Song of the Season – Pastor Brianne Christiansen – Sep 2025

Last week, as I left the church after an evening deacon meeting, a noise stopped me in my tracks: the singing of cicadas.

Now, this is not a new sound to me. I have old memories of counseling at a summer camp during a cicada summer in Iowa, where the ground was littered with dead bugs which was only a miniscule amount of the alive bugs that filled the trees that lined our walk to dinner. My second-grade campers would hit a tree full of these large ugly bugs and then run away screaming with laughter as the cicadas swarmed them. Every night, the cicadas sang us to sleep, the screen windows of our cabin doing little to muffle their rhythmic screeching.

I didn’t realize until last week that we didn’t have cicadas in Montana, and I’d forgotten about this racket. And suddenly this old sound was made new for me. Have you noticed how loud cicadas are? Compared to humans, cicadas are not that big and yet together they make such a loud noise. Have you noticed that they sing in waves, like they’re talking to one another? What are they singing about? Maybe cooler weather and changing leaves and the rhythms of time.

I found myself laughing as I drove home, the irony of this midwestern transplant suddenly find God’s presence in a tree filled with cicadas. Where I once imagined screeching, now, I heard a song. Where I was experienced disgust, now, I found delight. An old story made new.

Creation is one of the many ways God speaks to us. Psalm 19:1-4 says “The heavens are telling the glory of God… There is no speech, nor are there words…yet their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.” My experience with the cicadas reminded me that if I paid attention, the old story of creation will welcome me once again into the wonder of God’s presence.

Our sermon series for this fall is called “Word of God, Speak.” We’ll tell old familiar stories from the Old Testament, paying attention to how God speaks to God’s people – through creation, through prophets, through silence, through the Word…

My prayer is that we may experience the renewed delight of God’s presence as we pay attention to how God spoke in the past and begin to notice that God is still speaking to us today. May the God who brings beauty to a cicada’s song continue to make all old stories new.

Blessings, Pastor Brianne