Pensamientos para hoy (afterthought for today)
Ants in the Desert
When I was a young kid my family and I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada from 1962-1967. I loved it. My backyard was the Nevada desert, and I had lots of wide-open spaces and wonderful places to explore. The views were spectacular--desert vistas with mountains in the distance. Mt. Charleston was the highest mountain and its snow-capped peak was not far away. As children of the desert my friends and I had lots of interesting things to do. We often looked for lizards and other creatures. Nevada has big ants--lots of big ants--lots of big black ants and lots of big red ants. I would often catch ants and put them into a large glass jar filled with sand and watch them make their homes and tunnels. If you've ever kept ants this way, then you know that they are very easy to keep alive. They only require a small amount of food and water. An interesting phenomenon among ants is that their colonies are divided into different castes that each have different responsibilities. The vast majority of ants in any colony are the worker ants. These are the ants that are responsible for feeding the queen and the male ants whose only responsibility is to mate with the queen. Without the hard, unceasing efforts of the worker ants the colony would soon die. Solomon tells us: "Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer (Proverbs 30:25)."1 Solomon's point is that the ant works hard to prepare for the future. Every church exists today only because Christians of past generations worked hard to prepare for the future. These faithful Christians may not have envisioned how their church might change and grow with subsequent generations, but they trusted God to take their efforts and perpetuate their faith in those generations. Now the responsibility falls to us. We are the workers who "are not strong", but we prepare our resources for the future. With eyes of faith we try to envision a church that is stronger and more effective. With trust in God we work hard so that the church of our children and grandchildren not only survives but also is an even more glorious place of worship and edification. If we all do our part, we can have the assurance that God will take our efforts and multiply them and use them to build his Church and further his Kingdom. Working for His Glory, Pastor Steve January 20, 2007Footnotes
1Proverbs 30:25, NIV (New International Version). Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations taken from the NIV.
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