Pastoral Ponderings— NOT the bees knees…
I had a very unpleasant surprise yesterday! It’s one thing to keep bees for honey in a hive FAR from the house, as I’ve started this year. It’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax (beeswax?) to find a great big nest of MEAN bees in your attic as I discovered yesterday—and they’re not even honey producing bees either. The nest I discovered looks a lot like a hornets’ nest–bigger than a softball—like 7” across—but it looks more like yellow jackets. That’s not so big for a hornets’ nest you might see in a tree or out in the woods—but NOT a pleasant surprise for your attic!
The attic is certainly not the most used space in the house, but important nonetheless. At attic is often thought of as a symbol of those rarely tended parts of our lives that collect either only seasonal, or even more infrequently tended to things. Well, the nest is gone now, but that’s a different story! Yet I’ve already killed six of those bees that snuck out in my kitchen this morning. It might be a stretch to call them “evil,” or even sinful, but with the amount of pain they can cause, I think I’ll call them that anyway.
We all do have parts of our lives that we don’t tend to very much, and like these bees in my attic, those untended parts of our lives can be a breeding ground for hidden issues. And like the bees, such issues or may not be “evil” or “sinful,” but can cause a lot of pain anyway! And even when we try to root them out, also like the bees in my kitchen this morning, they can spread and cause havoc. Now if I had spent more time in my attic, or if I had been quicker to seal all the holes those bees can get in (the house is likely 150 years old—and not so well tended in recent years to boot…), I’d likely have less of a bee problem.
We could likely do a better job keeping our lives clear of stinging Bad Things, too, if we were to make sure we “seek first the Kingdom of God” in sealing out the holes that allow those Bad Things to come into our lives though. And that might prevent the breeding and growing of issues in our lives that might otherwise sneak into our lives, and that like the bees, can sting us pretty badly.
Seek first the Kingdom of God in all the places of our lives—even our lives’ “attics”—and that just might prevent some serious stings! After all, “pest control”—or maybe sin control– is an important part of our journey of faith.
Pastor Jim