As some of you are aware, my husband and I want to move to the country, to try our hand at farming. Nothing grandiose—a larger vegetable garden, maybe a few sheep. And bees.
Confession: I know nothing about bee keeping. I have a vague notion that you use smoke to calm them, and I know bees are essential to pollination. That’s about the extent of my knowledge. So I have been reading up on the subject. (Yes, we have no farm, and no beehive, but when we do, I’ll be prepared!) And when the opportunity arises, I take a moment and simply observe the bees going about their work. I have been impressed by the single-mindedness of the bee and have decided there is a lesson here.
Thomas Kelly says in A Testament of Devotion—“Too many of us have too many irons in the fire. We get distracted by the intellectual claim to our interest in a thousand and one good things, and before we know it we are pulled and hauled breathlessly along by an over-burdened program of good committees and undertakings.” (And here’s where I really sat up and took notice) he goes on to say: “I am persuaded that this fevered life of church workers is not wholesome.”
Every week I say to myself, I really need to be better about___ (fill in the blank—reading the Bible, exercising, practicing my Spanish, spending time with my son, eating more vegetables, etc.). But every successful attempt to Accomplish Something means one of the other goals may fall through the cracks. Making time to exercise means I don’t have as much time to read the Bible; spending time with my son means it’s pizza (or grilled cheese) for dinner again. I find myself wishing I were a honey bee, single-minded of purpose, so I could crawl into bed each night with the knowledge that today I did exactly what I needed to do, no more, no less.
That vague sense of disquiet is God’s voice, according to Kelly. He says, “For over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living, which we know we are passing by.”
I’m tempted to excuse some of what Kelly calls the “madcap, feverish” life as mere necessity. Parenting, working, cooking, cleaning—these things take time, and can feel fracturing, especially when we try to compartmentalize our various selves in the name of efficiency.
But other sources of uncomfortable busyness are self-imposed, and this is especially true of Christian service, because we tend to throw ourselves into every good work that comes along. Kelly suggests another way. Acceptance of service should not be based solely on opportunity and “a rational calculation of the factors involved,” he says, but “should really depend upon an answering imperative within…”
Which brings me back to bees. My research has informed me that bees are not really single-minded at all. Worker bees are responsible for gathering pollen and nectar, making honey, building the honeycomb, keeping the hive at a constant temperature, and feeding the pupae. In other words, bees have “madcap feverish” lives too. The thing is, each bee performs her tasks with (as far as we know) no sense that she is being “pulled and hauled breathlessly along by an over-burdened program.” Perhaps this is because the bee is in her own way answering the divine imperative within.
Which leaves me with a nagging question: how will I know? How will I know when I am heeding what Kelly calls “the divine Whisper” rather than saying yes out of a sense of obligation or because logic would seem to dictate that some task should be mine? I am no theologian, so I can only quote Kelly again: “A concern is God-initiated, often surprising, always holy, for the Life of God is breaking through into the world.” Following a leading, he says, “is peace and power and astounding faith and joy, for in unhurried serenity the Eternal is at work in the midst of time, triumphantly bringing all things up unto Himself.”
I think the key word here is joy. I don’t know if bees rejoice in the accomplishment of their tasks, but I suspect God’s presence in all creation means they do. A task may be difficult, it may require courage and patience and perseverance, it may require sacrifices large or small, but if it does not vibrate (I almost said “buzz”) with an undercurrent of joy, it is not my task to fulfill.
“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul…The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.” Psalm 19:7-8.
I like to think Thomas Kelly had bees in mind when he was writing about these things. Why else would he have admonished busy Christians that the work of “world-betterment and . . . feeding the hungry and clothing the naked” must be deeply rooted “in the heavenly vision of divine vistas of the meadows of God?” (Doesn’t that conjure up images of bees buzzing happily among the meadows of God?) Notice that the psalm goes on to say, “The ordinances of the Lord are . . . more precious than gold . . . they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb” (Psalm 19:9-10).
And so I propose for myself to follow the bees’ lead, to celebrate honeyed ordinances of God, and find the joy that flows from divinely ordered busyness!
