Of God, Humankind, and Ants

 

Friday, January 8, 2021

Honor the Lord, you heavenly beings; honor the Lord for his glory and strength.  Honor the Lord for the glory of his name.  Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.  The voice of the Lord echoes above the sea.  The God of glory thunders.  The Lord thunders over the mighty sea.  The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic.  The voice of the Lord splits the mighty cedars; the Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon.  He makes Lebanon’s mountains skip like a calf; he makes Mount Hermon leap like a young wild ox.  The voice of the Lord strikes with bolts of lightning.  The voice of the Lord makes the barren wilderness quake; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.  The voice of the Lord twists mighty oaks and strips the forests bare.  In his Temple everyone shouts, “Glory!”  The Lord rules over the floodwaters.  The Lord reigns as king forever.  The Lord gives his people strength.  The Lord blesses them with peace.  Psalm 29:1-11

I’m a good bit larger than an ant.  And that’s not just because of pounds gained over the holidays, or coronavirus boredom eating; it’s just the nature of humans and ants. That is also the kind of relationship between humankind and God; we are a lot smaller than the I AM.

It’s easy enough for a human to crush an ant without much effort.  After all, at my post-holiday length, girth, and mass, it would take around 45,000 ants to equal the space I take up on this planet.  Still, if given a choice, I do not squash ants; they are God’s creatures, and you don’t mess with that.  Unless they sting you!  Or infest your picnic.  Or start gnawing the beams that hold your house up.  Then you call the exterminator.  As part of humanity my benevolence towards ants does have a limit. 

There is also a correlation in this with our relationship to our Creator.  He doesn’t smash us like unwanted bugs; His benevolence and patience extend to humankind on a much deeper level than ours does toward ants (and each other). 

Aside from the fact that God’s understanding of us is much greater than our understanding of anything, God also has limitless capacity for grace and mercy.  It is a good thing that is true, because we wouldn’t stand a chance of surviving otherwise.

And that is where my astonishment about we humans leaps to the foreground.  I am amazed at how lightly humankind presumes upon God’s grace and mercy by treading on His holiness.  It is almost like an ant invading the picnic and staring the human in the face and saying, I’m taking that slice of gooey German chocolate cake, buddy…and what’re YOU gonna do about it?  I can tell you, an ant with an attitude like that would be a stain on the checkered tablecloth in a heartbeat.

The Psalmist tells us our attitude towards God should be that of honor and worship.  That is a far cry from the reality of today’s world.  There are so many who deny even the existence of God, let alone His preeminence.  Many acknowledge God’s existence, but their lack of honor and worship disdains His rightful place in our lives.  For too many humans, worship is reduced to a ritualistic nod of acquiescence to custom, or simply doing what one must to cover the bases just in case God might notice their naughtiness and take away their toys.  We humans can be arrogant and petulant enough to make nursery school children look like Harvard scholars.  We seem to be as thankless to our Creator as ants raiding the picnic.

Unfortunately, it has always been thus.  The first thing Adam did upon hearing there was nothing forbidden him, except that one tree in the middle of the garden, was to hunt up a ladder to pick the highest cherry on the limb.  Our first parents literally ate themselves right out of house and home.  There is nothing like forbidden fruit to ensure we humans will make another stupid choice.

To the point for today’s Psalm…this poetic reminder of God’s majesty, holiness, and power, and the call to worship Him with all reverence and fidelity, is no suggestion; it is the sound of the ram’s horn, an alert that we stop being petulant ants at God’s picnic, and line up to serve the King of Kings.

For You Today

Here’s a good question at the start of another year:

What will you do differently this year to keep your worship of God genuine, fresh, and holy?  He is that important, you know.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

For other posts on this text see The Voice of God and Kicking the Hornet's Nest      

 

Unusually Wise

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Friday, September 21, 2018

There are four things on earth that are small but unusually wise:  Ants—they aren’t strong, but they store up food all summer.  Hyraxes—they aren’t powerful, but they make their homes among the rocks.  Locusts—they have no king, but they march in formation.  Lizards—they are easy to catch, but they are found even in kings’ palaces.  Proverbs 30:24-28(NLT)

Sometimes it’s easy to miss the small things – ants, lizards, locusts (well, it’s hard to miss a swarm of locusts), and hyraxes.  Hyraxes?  I had to look that one up.  It seems the little critter that resembles your average rodent is more related to an elephant or manatee than Mickey Mouse[2].  They have multichambered stomachs like cows, for digesting even the toughest plant materials, and their incisor teeth grow throughout the lifetime like tusks.  They live in the Middle East and Africa in the dry, rocky regions, subsisting in barren places.  You must be unusually wise to survive in places like that!

The four creatures have wisdom in common, but what makes them such worthy examples that we should learn from them?  Perhaps it’s community cooperation.

Ants

The power of the anthill is legendary.  One ant might be a nuisance, but his family can end a picnic.  I have seen anthills in Zimbabwe that are more like ant mountains, 10 feet high!  One ant might take a lifetime to build a condominium like that; the cooperating colony can build it faster than Donald Trump can put up another tower.

Locusts

Well, who hasn’t seen a Nat Geo special that includes a swarm of locusts denuding the landscape of vegetation.  They march (fly) in formation according to the proverb.  They have no king or ruler, but the community moves together, turns together, and has the same purpose together…eat!  (Methodists have that last part down to a science!)

Hyraxes

The rock mouse lives in community and fiercely defends its’ tribe!  This kind of cooperation is called loyalty. 

Lizards

The prehistoric lizard finds a place to survive…desert, mountain, king’s palace or garbage dump; they go about the business of life.  What makes them unusually wise in this respect is their adaptability to conditions.  Lizards, like most species, do not generally thrive in captivity, but faced with the live or die of harsh challenges in the wild, they exist everywhere, proliferating, and serving God’s purposes.

Building like ants, moving like locusts, loyal like hyraxes and unafraid like the lizards – this is the formula of four kinds of small, but unusually wise groups of creatures.

I would say that formula also works for churches and families!

For You Today

Build…don’t tear down.

Move…don’t couch potato.

Be loyal…don’t be a fair-weather sort.

Adapt…there’s more than one way to serve God and each other.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Photo Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] Wikipedia

Smarter Than Google

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise.  Proverbs 6:6 (NRSV)

We are used to comparisons of how industrious an ant can be.  But a new study published two days ago by the National Academy of Sciences holds that ants are smarter than Google.  Co-author of the article, Professor Jurgen Kurths told The Independent, transition between chaos and order is an important mechanism and I’d go so far as to say that the learning strategy involved in that, is more accurate and complex than a Google search.

I love professor Kurths’ terminology…transition between chaos and order.  That’s exactly what God did in the Genesis creation account; the universe was in chaos and God brought form, meaning, purpose and order to make a paradise.

Back to the smart ant and less-smart Google

Google uses algorithms, complex mathematical formulas to find information on the ever-expanding Internet chaos.  Ants tell each other where the food is located.  Why, then, are ants considered more sophisticated and organized than Google?  Well, the scientists are still learning, but they hold that the ants cooperate to such an extent that the intelligence and organization of the group (as opposed to the single ant) is mind-boggling.

Here’s how:

A single ant will do what it can to find food for the whole colony.  As it pushes out in (what seems to be) random patterns, searching for food sources, it leaves pheromone traces, little “scents” of itself.  When it finds, say, a half-eaten biscuit leftover from your picnic, the little guy will bring it back to the nest.  A group of workers will be dispatched to the site, following the pheromone tracks like a trail of breadcrumbs.  As they walk the phero-trail, information about location is stored, indexed and shared with all the other ant-workers so that the journey to the half-biscuit becomes the best possible route.  That’s when the whole group begins to travel in single file directly to the target, expending the least amount of energy to retrieve that Hardee’s ham biscuit.

It’s community cooperation for the good of all.

I think Christians of all stripes can learn a lesson from that.

For You, Today…

Do you isolate yourself?  Are you a hyper-individualist?

Go to the ant….learn how community is God’s design.