Be A Bee

I recently had the opportunity to speak at the Mother Daughter Brunch at my church. These are the thoughts I shared about bees.

Bees aren’t really beautiful like butterflies, or sweet like ladybugs. We aren’t usually very happy to be landed on by a bee. And for those of us who aren’t bees, the stinger end can be a little scary. But there are a lot of things we can learn from bees.

Bees have a purpose. And they know that purpose automatically. No one has to tell them what their purpose is. They don’t sit in the hive and agonize over what to do with their lives. They don’t get sucked into anxiety trying to decide what will give their lives meaning. No one tells them that they need to figure out their own purpose. Bees are so lucky!

We don’t have it quite that easy. Our purpose doesn’t come by instinct. We don’t just automatically know what to do and how to do it. So how do we figure it out?

We could look around us, at our neighbors, our friends, social media, the news. There are lots of things we see in this world that often look like they could be a purpose. Make more money, buy a big house, a nice car, have the most stuff. Do all the right things, wear the right clothes, have the right opinions so everyone will love me. Find peace and happiness within myself. Follow my heart, follow my passion, visualize my success. Be strong and independent.

Romans 12:2 tells us, Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

So I could try to get those worldly ideas to lead me to a purpose that is good and pleasing and perfect. But they don’t even come close. The striving for those worldly things leads me to stress and anxiety and depression when I can’t make them all happen on my own.

A bee doesn’t try to make his own purpose or find his own way. He doesn’t strive to be better than all the other bees, or have a bigger hive, or be the best looking bee. He simply accepts the purpose that has been given to him by his instinct, and gets to work. It kind of makes me wish I was a bee.

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2:10) 

God planned out long ago what the purpose for each of us will be.

When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, He gives us the Holy Spirit to be our “instinct”. 

For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. (Philippians 2:13) That’s the instinct that tells us what we are meant to do. That’s the voice we need to learn to listen for and to obey when we hear it. 

A bee doesn’t just sit around and wait for his instinct to give him a big job to do. He lives by his instinct every day, doing everything it tells him to do, practicing following that instinct for every decision. Knowing that even the smallest insignificant urges are important. 

It takes practice for us to follow our instinct. We aren’t going to hear a booming voice from the sky one day, telling us our grand purpose, if we haven’t been listening for that quiet voice guiding us along the way every day. We aren’t going to have the strength and courage to obey a big command from the Lord if we haven’t practiced and trained by learning to obey the little nudges along the way, by learning that He is faithful every time we obey. 

When we turn to the Lord and let Him transform the way we think, we start living by “instinct”, the Holy Spirit living inside of us. And as we submit to that Spirit we start to want what He wants. His desires for us become our hearts desires. And when we follow those desires that He has given us, we find peace and joy in a purpose that is indeed good and pleasing and perfect.

Easy peasy, right? Not so much.

The voices of the world are so loud sometimes that it’s easy to get distracted and pulled away from the desires the Holy Spirit gave us. We start to believe the lies of what the world says we should want. We start wanting what everyone else wants, to be like everyone else, forgetting that God wants to transform us into a new person, different and set apart from the world. 

Bees are not so easily distracted from the job they were made to do…so be a bee!

Did you know that a bumblebee with a full stomach is only 40 minutes from starvation? Bees are always looking for food. They can never stop searching for food sources and stopping for snacks.

Our spirits are a lot like bumblebees. Without consistent feeding they begin to starve. When we get distracted by the world, we stop looking for good spiritual food. We stop making regular meals to fill our spiritual bellies. We don’t even think we have time for quick spiritual snacks.

Jesus told us that He is the bread of life and the living water. But we can’t just eat one piece of bread and take one drink and expect that to sustain us for life. We need balanced meals from our 4 spiritual food groups… the Word, worship, fellowship, and prayer. And we need all of them on a regular basis to keep us healthy and filled up. 

You can start with a scoop of worship, to whet your appetite and get you ready for the main dish. Then have a big piece of the Word with a side of prayer to bring out the full flavor. And then finish it up with some nice sweet fellowship to top it all off and fully fill your spiritual belly.

You can feel free to overindulge or binge on any part of this meal, there’s no such thing as too much. You don’t need to worry about moderation or being allergic to any of the ingredients. It’s a free, all you can eat, zero calorie buffet so you can take as much as you want and really dig in.

I’ve never seen a bee on a diet. Don’t put your spirit on a diet either. Be a bee!

And when a bee finds a really good source of food, do you know what he does? He flies back to the hive and does a dance to tell the other bees all about it.

Psalm 107:1-2 says, Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever. Has the Lord redeemed you? Then speak out! Tell others he has redeemed you from your enemies.

When the Lord shows up in your life and fills you with joy, peace, contentment, victory, freedom…be a bee! Tell all your friends how great it was and where you got it so they can find it too.

Bees are not solitary creatures. While they each do what they need to do to sustain themselves, most of the work they do is for the good of the whole hive. Each one does his part, whether it’s building the nests, storing the food, clearing dead material out of the hive, temperature regulation. Each one knows his job, and he doesn’t wish he had been given a different one. The nest builders don’t grumble and wish they were in charge of the honey. Each job has its place for the good of the hive, and they all work together and care for each other.

I have seen videos of a bee who accidentally got covered in honey, couldn’t move or fly, couldn’t get himself free and if left alone would probably die that way. When the beekeeper placed him on the hive a group of other bees came to his rescue, cleaning him up bit by bit, not giving up until every spot of honey was removed and he was free.

This is how we are each called by the Lord. Each of us has a job that He calls us to, and they’re all different. We are called to do our job, not anyone else’s. And when one of us gets covered and stuck, we are called to do what we can to help, not leaving their side until they are free. So be a bee!

When bees leave the hive their job is to collect and spread pollen. They collect what they need to take back to the hive to make honey, and in the process they spread it around to pollinate the flowers and help them to grow and bloom.

So go be a bee! Go out and collect everything you need to keep your spirit healthy and growing, carry it back to share with your hive, and on the way sprinkle a little on the people you meet so they can bloom too.

Bees live every day by their instinct. They don’t ever take a break from being bees, it’s who they are. They don’t all focus just on making the very best honey. They focus on their individual purposes, on avoiding distraction, on staying well fed, on helping the hive. And the byproduct of all that hard work turns out to be incredibly sweet.

We sometimes need a break from our worldly duties. But our jobs are not who we are. Our responsibilities are not who we are. When we turn our lives over to Jesus, we become His. When we submit to Him we hand ourselves over piece by piece, and He replaces each of our pieces with a piece of Himself. Those pieces He gives us put together a beautiful picture of who we really are, who we are meant to be.

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

We don’t produce these things ourselves, we can’t be all these things by trying harder. These are the things that are a byproduct of walking with Jesus and letting Him show us the true picture of ourselves. What we end up producing when we live by the Holy Spirit, letting Him be our instinct, when we focus on our purpose, on avoiding distraction, on staying spiritually fed, and on helping our hive is even sweeter than honey.

So let’s all be bees!