ABSTRACT
Termite is indeed tremendous in his effect, and terrible in his warning to human beings. He is indeed a messenger of God, an angel of the Lord, reminding us that we can never rest secure in what our hands have built up with patient toil. In his invisibility Termite may be compared with the Flea and the Grasshopper—the Flea in his bite, and the Grasshopper in his voice, though the Termite reserves his bite and his voice for his task of eating the wood. Yet he is even more invisible—if one may speak of degrees of invisibility—than either the Flea or the Grasshopper. He isn't only invisible himself. He also makes other things invisible by eating holes in them. Then they become so full of holes that they fade away. He serves not only to destroy the works of men, thereby emphasizing their ephemeral essence, but also to reveal the creative mastery and mercy of God, as "this tremendous lover".
