The Tree Weta

“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.” [John 11:25]

Living on New Zealand’s North Island is a very large cricket-like insect with thorny legs called the tree weta. These giant flightless bugs typically live in holes in trees and eat lichens, flowers, seeds, and fruit. Some species grow four inches long and are as heavy as a cell phone. But don’t reach for them if they vibrate; they can deliver a very painful bite with their powerful mandibles and also inflict irritating scratches with their bacteria-laced spiny legs.

The menacing physical appearance of the weta makes these giant thorny bugs scary enough, but when you mix that with their zombie-like ability to revive from death, well, you have one spooky bug. Of course the weta does not really return from the dead, but they do sometimes “play dead.” When threatened it might lie still for a short time on its back, with legs splayed and claws exposed, and jaws wide open ready to scratch and bite. Another way wetas seem to cheat death is when they revive after being frozen alive for months. In the winter their bodies might be covered with frost at times in temperatures as low as minus 10 degrees C (14 degrees F). They are able to put themselves in a type of suspended animation because their haemolymph blood contains special antifreeze that prevents ice from forming in their cells.

Wetas can only pretend to rise from the dead, but the Bible says a day is coming when all will be resurrected. “Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth; those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:28,29). Christ rose from the dead and holds the keys of death. He offers to each of us the gift of the resurrection and everlasting life. Some Christians are Christian in name only. They are like the frozen wetas that need to be thawed and resurrected!