I felt like a honeybee I saw in my yard. I already share the name, since Deborah means “the bee,” in Hebrew. I considered how God’s hand on my life as a wife and mother, parallels this hardworking little gal (all worker bees are female).
The bee was pollinating the humble dandelions in my grass. She did not worry that others look down on this “weed” (which is actually nutritious, and I grow them and eat them). Instead she dug deeply into the many yellow petals and sipped the rich nectar inside. I was reading my Bible at the time, and I felt like I was digging deeply into God’s sweet word, which the secular world looks down on as a worthless weed.
I wondered, am I more like this bee? I seem so insignificant to my world, and if this one bee disappeared would the world care?
Like this little bee, I am in the background as I work hard, caring for my family, and teaching my girls about God’s love. Like this bee, I have been buffeted by trials, the way she got knocked around by the harsh wind we had with this weekend’s rain. Yet I refuse to give up on my work and my family, even when it is hard, and no one notices me.
Unlike the bee, I do often feel alone, and I suspect many mothers in our world feel that way, alone, insignificant and unimportant. But like that bee I am not alone in my hard work. I really am part of a bigger community. Like the honey bee who works so hard to help build her hive, care for the queen and babies and make honey, we mothers are building something amazing and valuable too. We are raising our children to be Christians in a secular world that does not value us. Even when we feel small and insignificant in our world, there are so many other moms who are working hard too. Our collective work of caring for our family and raising Christian children is building and helping to repair the church, like the bee’s hive. Our children will be the future leaders in the Christian church.
We mothers are part of a community that is important and powerful. Even though the whole world might not call us valuable, we truly are. Each honey bee’s hard works is essential, and even more essential is the work we mothers do. The world may not notice us or value us. But God sees our hard work, and He said “Not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your father knowing it,” (Matt. 10:29). This must be true of each honey bee and especially true of us as mothers.
God values our very hard and often humble work, and He is pleased with us, even when the world fails to notice or appreciate us.
We are partnering with God to build up our own families, and even our church.
From now on, when you look at a bee, I pray you will imagine God’s face smiling at you while you work so hard in the background. God values your hard work. He values you!
