The Ants Go Marching

  

We can learn a lot from ants.  This past week, I got the opportunity to learn up close and personal as the warm weather brought a few of them up from under our house and into our living room (exterminator will be here tomorrow!)!  We haven’t figured out what the draw was since there wasn’t any loose food or other ant-friendly things in that room, but at least one tiny ant chose to breach the barrier we all had agreed upon and find its way under a random part of our floor molding.  What happened next is where the teaching and learning took place.

With very few stray exceptions (less than I could count on one hand), the first ant led a literal parade of ants in single-file over to the edge of our room-size rectangular area rug.  It then turned left to follow the edge of the rug its entire length, then right at the corner to continue following the edge of the rug.  I caught up with the string of ants before they reached another corner, but I’m sure they would have kept turning right at the next two corners until they made it back to where they started.  Not one ant went either over or under the rug – they did not deviate from their marching orders!

I couldn’t help but see the spiritual connection.  How many times do people blindly follow the leader of some sin or other evil in our culture without questioning anything?  Even as Christians, we often assume that whatever everyone else is doing is something that is worth doing or important for us to do.  We may not follow the worst choices in our culture, but we seem to easily follow those within our “Christian” circle without fully examining everything and looking to God’s Word for our direction.

Conversely, I also thought about how hard it seems to be for us sometimes to follow God without questioning.  We want him to explain everything to us or show us the full picture before we will simply trust him with childlike (or ant-like) faith.  We like to apply our reasoning skills and logic to our walk with God, which almost always has disastrous results.  The whole point of faith is venturing into the unknown and trusting the Leader – not having everything figured out before we step out in faith.

What do you need to learn from the ant?  Do you need to trust God your leader more and be willing to step out in faith in some area where you’ve been afraid in the past?  Or do you need to stop following the wrong leaders and make better choices?  Or maybe, like most of us, it’s a combination of both.  The next time you see an ant, think about what God might want you to learn from these tiny creatures.  If you’re like me, God is always teaching something new just when we need it most.

 

We All Need a Hero

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and they rescue us from all different kinds of things.  Nearly six months ago, a tiny, premature, drug-addicted baby was placed into the foster system and needed a hero.  My son and daughter-in-law stepped up to meet the challenge.  Within about an hour, their family dynamics, work life, monthly bills, and sleep habits changed drastically!  To this expressionless, helpless one with partially transparent skin, whose weight has now more than tripled since that first day and whose smile and personality have begun to develop, my kids are true heroes.  And as they prepare to return this child to the biological parents soon, they are also my heroes.  God has called them to this wonderful ministry of love called foster parenting; but it isn’t something he has called all of us to.  Out of six foster placements in their home (so far), this baby is the fourth who didn’t get to stay forever.  This kind of heroism is not for the faint of heart.

We all have real needs as well as felt needs.  They differ as much as we differ from each other, and the complexity of our needs grows as we reach adulthood.  Most of us are looking for someone or something to step up and be our hero to help meet or alleviate some of these needs.  People talk about historical heroes, military heroes, superheroes, and other types of heroes.  But the greatest hero has already arrived on the scene in the person of Jesus Christ:

“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!”                                                        Philippians 2:6-8

When God came to earth in the form of his Son, Jesus, and died on a cross while bearing the full weight of the sins of all of mankind, he rescued us all as no one else could.  Romans 5:8 tells us that Christ did this “while we were still sinners”.  In other words, he became our hero before we even knew we needed one.  Much like the baby placed in my kids’ home, we have all been given the opportunity, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, to be placed into the kingdom of God.  This baby was asked to trust new parents after being temporarily betrayed by biological parents; and we are asked to trust God regardless of all the untrustworthy people we may have encountered in our lives.  He is the only hero who can truly rescue us and meet all of our needs beyond our expectations and wildest dreams.

Babies take for granted the care of loving parents, and they won’t have any memories in the future of the first part of their lives.  Before they even know what they need, someone is their hero.  May we never take for granted the rescue that God’s love provided for each of us through the gift of his Son, and may we seek to follow Jesus’ example by becoming servants to those around us who are all looking for a hero – whether they know it or not.