Bee-lieve in God

by Irene Zundel

Abigail worked so hard at parenting her teenage daughter Emily, but Lord knows it wasn’t an easy task. After losing her father last year, just after her thirteenth birthday, Emily had become alternately sullen and rebellious. She vacillated between bouts of depression and acts of open defiance.

As a way to reconnect with her daughter, Abigail went back to gardening, a hobby they both loved when Emily was younger. The contented hours they spent in the fresh air and sunshine gave them plenty of time to talk and be buddies.

On one exceptionally beautiful summer day, mother and daughter were picking some fresh vegetables for a lunch-time salad. Emily appeared to be distracted, nervous, and uncommunicative, as they roamed between the neatly manicured rows. Finally, she threw down her lettuce, stared at her mother and said,

“I refuse to go to church tomorrow, or any other day for that matter. In school, my teacher told me that the universe came into existence from a Big Bang, not God. And all my friends think church is stupid and a waste of time. You can just go without me!”

Abigail felt like she was just punched in the stomach. Her mind was reeling and she thought her knees might just buckle under her. There was so much she wanted to say, yet she knew from bitter experience that arguing with Emily when she was in one of her moods never accomplished anything. In fact, it always made matters worse.

Instead, she offered to get the two of them some sweet tea, and momentarily retreated inside the house. In the kitchen Abigail fervently prayed, “Dear Lord, help me find the right words to reach my daughter, and give her a receptive heart!”

Outside they quietly sipped their tea in comfortable deck chairs, underneath a big outdoor umbrella. Abigail watched several bees flitting happily among the lovely wildflowers in her next door neighbor’s yard. In an instant, she knew that God had provided an answer to her prayer.

Abigail motioned towards the bees and said to her daughter:

“If you were a honeybee, you would spend your day flying, in search of nectar, at a speed of about fifteen miles per hour. You might make as many as 25 trips between your hive and nearby flowers, visiting up to one thousand blossoms in a single trip! You would fly up to one and a half miles away on a single foraging trip.

As you flew, you would make a pleasant buzzing sound, which results from your flapping your wings an amazing 11,400 times per minute!

You would visit only one type of flower per flight, and you would select the colors you visited in a specific order-blue first, followed by purple, then yellow and orange.

Using your long, tube-like tongue, you would suck the nectar out of flowers and store it in your honey stomach. (A honey stomach is the bee’s second stomach, and functions as a backpack to store the nectar before it is flown back to the hive). After filling it with nectar sucked from as many as 1,000 flowers, you would fly back home, at a size that is roughly double your normal weight!

Once inside, you might want to communicate to your fellow bees, where you were, and what kinds of flowers you found in the area. To give accurate directions for their future visit, you would perform an elaborate dance, telling them the direction to fly, and the approximate distance they would need to travel.

Then, worker bees would suck the nectar from your honey stomach into their mouths, and chew it for about half an hour. This process would release enzymes, which break complex sugars in the nectar down into simple ones. Simple sugars are easier for bees to digest, and are less prone to attack from bacteria, while it is stored within the hive.

Other bees would spread this more digestible nectar throughout the honeycombs, and fan it with their wings. Fanning helps water to evaporate, and the nectar to thicken into a nice gooey honey. Finally, the cell of the honeycomb would be sealed off with a plug of wax, effectively storing it until it is ready to be eaten.

Amazingly, this honeycomb is composed of hexagonal cells with walls that are only 2/1000 inch thick, yet support 25 times their own weight.

Then you, and your bee friends, would repeat the entire process, until 120-200 pounds of honey was produced and stored; the amount a typical bee colony needs to survive for one year.

This amounts to quite a feat! You see, it takes a thousand bees, flying a combined total of 55,000 miles, and visiting two million flowers in a season, to make just one pound of honey. It would take 100 to 200 times that effort to make enough honey to feed a whole colony of bees.

In the midst of that Herculean effort, you would have to stay out of the grip of the honeybee’s traditional enemies, which are numerous! Other insects, mites, spiders, and various birds, such as woodpeckers, bee martins and honey buzzards all call you food. Bears, skunks, badgers and baboons eat honeybees as well.

Should you have a weak or unprotected hive, you could return home to find devastation. The larvae of the wax moth sometimes invade honeybee’s homes, and destroy the wax combs inside.”

After a moment of silence Emily replied, “Wow, that is really amazing! I had no idea bees were so cool and that making honey was such a complicated deal. How do they learn to do all that stuff?”

Abigail smiled and said, “Sweetie, they are just doing what God created them to do. Do you really think that a creature so wonderfully complex and skilled could be the result of a random big bang? How do you explain their hard working nature, and their ability to co-operate with others? Do you think evolution can produce behavioral traits like those? And finally, think about what great odds bees overcome to produce their honey. Daily they have to protect their hives from both weather and predators. Surely you can see that their survival is due to the care and protection of a loving God.”

Emily thought for a few minutes. Abigail could see the wheels of her mind turning as she fidgeted and struggled to sort out her thoughts. Finally she said, “Mom, how do you explain the fact that scientists came up with the Big Bang theory. They are really smart people. Why shouldn’t I believe what they say?”

“Honey,” said Abigail, “even smart people can be wrong sometimes, and they aren’t always wise either. In fact they can even willingly throw away the truth that is staring them right in the face. In Romans 1:18-22 the Bible tells us:

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.

I know it is hard to accept, but your teacher and your school books are deceiving you. What they taught you is just plain untrue. There is a God who lovingly created everything with a plan and a purpose, and that includes you. Please don’t throw away your faith based on the wrong opinions of others.”

Tears welled up in Emily’s eyes as she reached to hug her mother. It was the first one she gave her in a very long time.

Again, Abigail felt her head reel, and her knees start to buckle. But this time, it was for a good reason! She could tell by her daughter’s embrace that she had gotten through to her.

As they were walking back inside, Emily said, “Hey Mom, we better do the laundry now. I have nothing to wear to church tomorrow!”

Scripture reference:

Direct your children onto the right path,
and when they are older, they will not leave it.

Proverbs 22:6, New Living translation