The Honey Bees

Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. (Exodus 3:7-8 ESV).

Bees are an intricate part of the ecosystem, especially for the pollination of fruit trees and vegetables. However, in 2006, American beekeepers began noticing that the numbers of colonies observed and harvested were mysteriously disappearing from one hive after another. The losses didn’t stop the next year, or the next, and although the catastrophic declines have recently abated a bit, no one knows why the bees are dying or how to save them. Experts have warned that colony collapse disorder (CCD), as the phenomenon has been dubbed, could imperil our food production systems. This is true in view of the fact that a full one-third of the agricultural crops in the United States are pollinated by bees. When the news broke earlier this week that there have been sightings of the Japanese Giant Hornet in the Seattle area, my curiosity was piqued. After a bit of research I found that their sting is very dangerous to humans, though there is something of a benefit to their voracious characteristics. They kill other insects, especially those that might be harmful to crops. Unfortunately they also kill the beneficial honey bee. It is often puzzling to me how God’s creation works. Today’s reading calls the Promised Land “a land flowing with milk and honey” (v. 8). It is a means of describing the bounty in the land. When the spies went in prior to the colonization of the land, their reports glowed with the sights of the fertility of the land. It signaled a future full of promise and provision. What’s amazing is how the land changed so drastically as the new nation left the worship of the God who delivered them from their Egyptian slavery. It became a virtual desert wasteland with poverty and starvation the norm. Our lesson is plain. God desires a relationship with His children. In exchange we receive all we could need. The land flows with milk and honey. When the land doesn’t produce such bounty it most often is simply because we fail to fulfill our role. We should be more like the worker bees than the giant hornets. I don’t think it bothers bees that they don’t get more credit for how they benefit the ecology of God’s garden as they produce their sweet honey. We ought to learn the truth that our calling is not to power or influence, but to simply go about our work and “not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (cf. Galatians 6:9).