Honey Bee Polka

"Honey bee dancing, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of their biology, is also one of the most fascinating behaviors in animal life. Performed by a worker bee that has returned to the honey comb with pollen or nectar, the dances, in essence, constitute a language that “tells” other workers where the food is. By signaling both distance and direction with particular movements, the worker bee uses the dance language to recruit and direct other workers in gathering pollen and nectar. " From the net

I like to watch the different science channels, Discovery, Smithsonian, etc.  However that requires I wade through all the religious indoctrination of Mr. Darwin and his ilk.  Time and time again we hear how this evolved and that evolved over zillions of years to be what it is today, and isn't that amazing?   Expert scientists attest to the complex way that nature has ordered herself, all with no master at the helm...just monkeys at a keyboard with time on their hands.

More a matter of the heart than of intellect, denying God as the creator and master of creation allows one to operate detached from any compulsion to a God and His will.  If you accept there is a God, then it stands to reason that one should find out what He wants from you....why you exist at all.  If He has rules, you would then have to consider the fact that you are not living by them, therefore, you are, in the end, accountable to that God.

Can't have that.  Darwin and the Science Channel make no such demands of moral accountability.

So all this occurred to me as I was looking at a honey bee on the ground outside of work.  There are commercial hives near there and there are thousands of bees flying to and fro getting the honey-dos done.  I thought of how that bee finds a flower and brings that message to the waiting colony back at 'Da' Hive'.  And I wondered...if these bees took millions of years to figure this out, how did the first bees do it?

For example:

Millions of years ago, bee number 12 comes back to the hive after striking it rich juuust over the next hill.  He points to the hill, but no one can see anything, so they are less than excited about it.  He thinks about doing the bee mime act.  Marcel Marceau Bee gives it a shot and only conveys the impression that he is behind an invisible door, pulling on a rope no one can see.  If only he had white bee gloves.

A few thousand years later, another bee comes to the same situation and, still having no white gloves or little French hat, comes up with the dance idea.  Unfortunately he is a lousy dancer and lacking any sense of rhythm, he cannot for the life of him make anything coherent out of it. He feels embarrassed and vows never to go to the prom where this horror would be relived in front of his peers.

How about if the bee is like my wife and cannot remember the names of any streets or roads?  She can get ya' there, but only if she drives.  How does that fit in?

Or maybe the bee has a lousy sense of direction and while he can dance like Fred Astaire with a road map in his hand, he mistakenly wiggles his butt North, when he wanted to point South.  An entire squadron of bees is never heard from again as they fly off to their doom.  I have a friend like that...cannot hit his 'south' end with both hands.  Sad.

Or how about this.  God, the creator of the the bee, the flower, the earth, the universe...He gave the bee what it needed just like He gave the flower, the earth, and the universe what it needed, right from the beginning.

No dancing lessons required.

Romans 1:20 (New International Version)

²⁰For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

The eyes of Christ

I have the selfish tendency of walking through life in an uncaring manner, being judgmental and fearful of others.  Or even worse, indifferent.  Indifference is more often the case.  It is so easy to be all about my stuff and my cares and my agenda that my eyes glaze over and pass on by.

But, the eyes of Christ.  They missed nothing as he walked this earth.  I was not there, of course, but it is obvious from what we can read and what we can know about the attributes of God, that His gaze was piercing and kind, looking past the masks we all wear and into the heart.

The woman at the well.  The accused woman.  The rich young man.

I cannot look at a man's heart.  But I need to see my fellow man as Jesus saw them.  I need to be compassionate and patient.  I need to care enough to know that they need to hear the truth in a kind way.  I need to care about their lost state more than I care about my fears of being transparent.  

I need to care, period.

Treading on serpents.

Mark 16:18 (New International Version)

¹⁸they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."

There is a group of folks, mostly centered in rural areas of the US, that have taken this passage as a directive to handle deadly snakes as an example of faith or God's power, or something.  They dance and sing and play around with rattlesnakes, almost in a trance state.  That has more of paganism then Christ in it and in my mind does not really prove much in any case. I doubt they drink poison.  Quaffing a tumbler of cyanide would be more impressive and substantive.


The other day I joined my wife as well as Sophie the Superdog and some others for a hike in a local woodlands park.  It is full into snake season here and I have already seen three rattlers.  Concern for the dogs drove some of the conversation that day as we walked...snake bit dogs are not a good thing.


I turned back early to do some things at home and walked alone back to the car.  Nearly there, in a wide section of road, a remarkable thing happened.


I kicked a rattlesnake.


I am pretty well trained at looking where I walk and scanning the trail ahead, likely a habit of years and years of trail riding on mtn bikes.  But I was off in some other place with my thoughts that moment and my eyes were high in the distance.  Out of my peripheral vision, and straight down, I caught a shape on the ground that seemed out of place.  As I stepped by, I felt a 'thump' on the bottom of my right foot (shoe) that caused me to pause and see what I had just found.


There, crawling across the road was a 6" to 8" rattler.  He or she was not even upset, not rattling with the two buttons it had nicely in place, and not even looking miffed.  Can a snake slither casually?  This one was.  I had just whacked it on the head with my shoe, or maybe it had actually struck out at me, but if so, it sure was not expecting another fight out of me.


I walked over and looked at the snake as it passed off the road into the grass and said, "thank you Lord".  I was unusually calm.  I mean, the snake was not at all bothered and it seemed reasonable that I, being a mature adult, should display at least as much poise as a young rattlesnake.


I turned and walked away and thought of how God watches over us and shows us grace.  That could have been a very different outcome.  But the God that is big enough to create the universe and calm a sea can keep a snake from harming me.


I mentioned it to a co-worker and he said the typical response to a story like that - "Boy, you sure were lucky".  I think not.  I have struggled with the question of how much God actually puts a hand in as far as details of everyday life.  Is there really even any room for luck or chance?  I do not know.


But I know this as much as I know anything at all...it was God's hand that spared me on that trail.  I cannot prove it, but I know it.  But life demonstrates this as well:  It does not always work that way.  God's people get cancer.  They struggle.  They lose jobs and lose loved ones.  The difference is in the Christ follower's faith and certainty that we do not know the future but we serve the one that does.


God is good and merciful and watches over foolish sheep like myself; the Good Shepherd is on guard.  But if I had been bitten, and I had suffered...it would not have changed God's goodness or his grace or his love.


My circumstances do not dictate God's character or limitations, but offer an opportunity to glorify Him regardless of the outcome.

So dawns a new blog.

Lately I have felt a need to express feelings and thoughts that do not really fit in my other blog(s), those being more cycling related or what have you.  Citizen of Heaven blog is not a boast or a brag, rather a place to begin from and a direction of movement; a line in the sand; a compass point where North is relative to a hope of heaven, a citizenship not of this earth.

And with that, I move forward for the time I have in this place, much like Reepicheep as quoted above and here below, with my nose pointed to the horizon.

"While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan's country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise..."