Sunday 16 June 2013

Honey for the Wise

Honey for the Wise

      Eat honey, my son, for it is good;
           honey from the comb is sweet to your taste.
      Know also that wisdom is like honey for you;
      If you find it, there is a future hope for you,
           and your hope will not be cut off.
     Proverbs 24:13-14


My brother, who works at an apiary, recently acquired a couple of beehives for himself that he showed us over the weekend.


A beehive is a fascinating thing, all those hundreds of bees tending to their duties: guarding the eggs, feeding the larvae, grooming the queen, fanning the entrance to the hive, collecting nectar to make honey. All busily doing exactly what they were created to do.


Which becomes all the more intriguing when you learn about the life cycle of a bee. Bees collect nectar from flowers to produce honey, which is what will sustain them through the winter when there are no flowers. During the summer months, a bee lives for 28 - 35 days; only those bees hatched in late September or October will survive over the winter. In that one month of life, a honey bee, flying 15 miles an hour, visiting 50 to 100 flowers per trip, will produce about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey. To produce one pound of honey, a whole hive of bees must fly over 
55 000 miles and visit two million flowers. Which is an astonishing amount of work for a future most of the bees will not see.*

 
And for us, “wisdom is like honey.” Wisdom, gained through the hard work of living, of doing what we were created to do. Sweet and good to taste. Hard-won sustenance. The farther we fly, the more metaphorical flowers we visit, the greater the wisdom. In the grand scheme of things, our life span is as brief as a honey bee's, but for us there is "a future hope, a hope that will not be cut off."


“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom....” Proverbs 9:10a

















Sunday 9 June 2013

Known and Unknown

I had a very insightful conversation with one of my kindergarten students this week.


Earlier in the day, one little boy had asked me when a boy turned into a man. A cute question for a 6-year-old to ask. I said a boy turned into a man when he started acting like one, and then carried on with the task at hand. And that seemed to be the end of the conversation.

Later in the day, that same boy came in from recess and instead of getting his shoes on, he was agitated and was flitting about worriedly.

Mrs. Thiessen,” he said. “You know a lot of things. Why can't you just keep on teaching us when we go into the next class and again and again until I'm a grown man?”

It was tempting to feel flattered, that this little boy thought I was so smart and that he would like me to be his teacher until he was a grown man.  (I suppose earlier in the morning he had been scoping out how long he would need to be prepared to have me as his teacher for his plan to work!). But, I knew that wasn't really what he was saying at all. I crouched down to his level.

It's scary to think about going to grade one, isn't it? With a new classroom and a new teacher?”

And that was it exactly. He seemed relieved that I understood what he was saying. Because I do. It is scary to face something new and unknown. It would be so much more comfortable to stick with what is familiar. At least that's the way it feels right now. I told him we would arrange to go visit the grade one class before school was done and see what it was like and we would meet the grade one teachers so we could see that they weren't scary ladies.

Real fears about real life.



And then my daughter announced at supper time that same day that she was afraid of dying. And I knew what she was talking about, too. I told her that the thing to do was to meet and get to know Jesus now in this life so that moving through death wouldn't be as scary, because then you would know someone familiar on the other side.

Knowing Jesus is the answer really for facing any unknown and unfamiliar situation because he is a “known” you can count on. Jesus himself promised, “...Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20b). Grade One and death and everything in between included.


Saturday 1 June 2013

Covered

This week it was confirmed yet again that I am not a big fan of
      a) stress.
      b) change.
      c) discomfort.
      d) making decisions under pressure.

And life says, basically, “Get used to it, honey.”


The Psalmist says in Psalm 143:8,

     Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love
        for I have put my trust in you.
     Show me the way I should go,
        for to you I entrust my life.

So after spending a night tossing and turning, I say that too in the morning, and am comforted and assured and I think directed, and by afternoon I have forgotten and am completely unsure of the direction I have chosen.


I am not usually a big fan of the war imagery in the Psalms, but there is comfort in Psalm 144:1-2:

     Praise be to the Lord my Rock,
        who trains my hands for war,
     my fingers for battle.
        He is my loving God and my fortress,
     my stronghold and my deliverer,
         my shield, in whom I take refuge,
      who subdues peoples under me.

God's got me covered. He trains me for the task set before me, even down to the details, down to my fingers. And then when life gets thick and hairy, God is my fortress and refuge where I can run to, hide out and be safe. And God is my shield, my protection in the frey when my task is to go out and do. And it is God who accomplishes the final result. And I am a big fan of that. 

 
Is there anything to fear besides forgetfulness?

Is my trust big enough to remember?