Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Proverbs 30:24-28, Little things, Part I

24 “Four things on earth are small,
    yet they are extremely wise:
25 Ants are creatures of little strength,
    yet they store up their food in the summer;
26 hyraxes are creatures of little power,
    yet they make their home in the crags;
27 locusts have no king,
    yet they advance together in ranks;
28 a lizard can be caught with the hand,
    yet it is found in kings’ palaces.

When I was small, I thought the very best Christmas and birthday presents were the huge ones. Not the medium-sized, not the large ones, but the ginormous ones. My parents would always tell me that "good things come in small packages" but I didn't think much of that adage at the time.

But we do grow up, and I think so, now. (Grin)

One 90 year old man is the beginning of an entire race of people.  Remember Abraham?
One small shepherd boy becomes the king that is a "man after God's own heart."  David, right? 
Even the church of today began as a small band of twelve disciples who followed Christ.

Our Father has a way of putting immense value in something small, and of teaching us important truths from small things, too.



The first creature in this passage is the ant -- we may not think he is very strong, since we are so much larger and can smoosh him with our shoe. But he is universally touted as very wise, because he prepares for the future, for the unknown. Remember the old cartoon short about the ant and the grasshopper? (Grin)
In other words, he plans ahead!
The ant has about 250,000 brain cells in his tiny head. That's a quarter of a million, and it sounds like a lot. 
Consider this, tho, the human brain contains about 10,000 million! A colony of 40,000 ants have about the same brain power as a human being!
But the ant does something with his little brain that we can learn from -- time management! Yep, I know, the ant doesn't call it that. In fact, he doesn't think about it much at all. He just works hard to prepare for harder seasons . . . just because it is spring or summer now, doesn't mean that winter is not coming.
We humans talk a lot about time management. But we also make some mistakes on managing one of our most precious resources: time.
We obsess about what happened yesterday.
We worry about tomorrow.
Or, we simply live for the moment, not acting wisely about the past or the future.

Why not change our attitude and adjust our thinking – and put things in place for the future?

We'll talk more about this tomorrow!

2 comments:

  1. And Ants OY!! They are constantly trying to crawl into my house from every spot they can find. It's a constant battle to keep them out.

    Maybe we should be this diligent in our endeavors....;)

    Time management is a problem for me as well.

    ReplyDelete

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