Honey

When Amanda was a baby she had an inseparable playmate. Her name was Honey. She was a cloth stuffed doll with a plastic head, blue eyes and a perpetual smile. Honey was never far away from Amanda. Honey is still around, packed away in one of many memorabilia boxes.

It has been a long time since I have thought of Honey, but honey is on my mind today.

This is the second season that I have had a beehive. My first year was unsuccessful because the bees did not have enough honey in the hive to survive the winter. This year it is quite a different story.

I don't have all the paraphernalia that is necessary for removing honey from the hive and extracting it from the super, so I depend on a friend to do that for me, and he splits the honey with me. He extracted the honey this week and yesterday he delivered 6 quarts of honey to our house. I am excited about that – even though it will take me a long time to eat that much! So I will be sharing honey with some of my friends. Are you interested?

My best friend from college came over this weekend to bring me another hive. He raised bees for a long time while he was doing research for his PhD, so he came over and gave me and a couple friends some pointers on beekeeping. He and the local friend both dressed in protective gear, so I am the only one who got stung. I would try to get as close to the hive as possible, and then suddenly I was running around the pasture swatting bees.  They had a good laugh at me.

Bees are simply amazing! It is so impressive how committed the worker bees are to the queen. A honeybee spends its short six-week life serving the queen. When predators threaten the beehive (like me yesterday) they are willing to sting and give up their life to protect the queen. They were created by God to serve the queen.

God created us to serve the King. This question is playing over and over in my mind: How does my commitment to the King measure up to the worker bee’s commitment to the queen?