Pastoral Ponderings—To Bee, or not to Bee…
I just discovered a disaster on a bee-sized scale—my GOOD hive that’s been really thriving until sometime in this past week, has been ravaged! I went to put in the stuff to take care of the evil of varroa mites that I was aware of, only to find the bottom of the hive filled with crumbs of wax, and that every cell of the comb that has so shortly before been filled with either honey or new bees springing to life, half eaten away.
Insidious invaders had inveigled their way into the hive and I’m crying into my Cap’n Crunch (my comfort food) in guilt and sadness for the loss. I knew to watch out for the dangers of varroa, for the hazards of issues with the queen and other challenges, but I didn’t know about the vicious Small Hive Beetles (SHB) and what to look for before they destroyed what I’ve been working toward all summer!
Ain’t it the way—all the way back to the wisdom of Socrates long before Jesus, who observed “We don’t know what we don’t know,” dangers lurk about, looking for ways to sneak in and destroy. Had I studied up more, maybe I would have known, but alas, I did not.
There’s a spiritual parallel here that you might be getting a niggling about: of course we know what we know, we know things we don’t know in our spiritual journey as well, where we also don’t know what we don’t know. Some of which, like SHB, can be quite hazardous. How can we protect ourselves from what we don’t know we don’t know?
In the bee keeping world, there’s book knowledge (I’ve studied SOME of that), and there’s the wisdom that comes from years of experience. One local club never got back with me when I tried to connect, the other has been meeting Sundays at noon- NOT the best time for a preacher! (But I just found out they now meet the last MON. of the month!)
In our spiritual journey, when we study our scriptures AND connect with the local spiritual club (like a church!) to gain wisdom from others who have “been there, done that,” we can not only be inspired and encouraged, but can also learn both about what we don’t know, and what we don’t know that we don’t know, which can help us prevent the damage of insidious, vermicious knids of a spiritual kind (catch the Willie Wonka reference?). When we don’t do such preventative work, we are more vulnerable than my poor lost bee hive.
Bee prepared! Keep alert! Don’t let those tiny evils eat away your joy! Pastor Jim