Heaven Meets Bees
On an ordinary day, with very little prompting, I decided I would beekeep.
With a generous backyard in a city that holds tight reigns on what the residents can or can’t do, I was surprised to see that I was permitted to have up to four hives. Research led to more research, which led to purchases, which led to more purchases. A collection grew in our mudroom: hive parts, white cotton suits, gloves, strange looking tools, and a smoke bellow. I learned about the honeybee’s dance that tells the others where the nectar is found. I learned about the colors they see, ultraviolet ones that we aren’t privy to. I learned how to tell them apart from yellow jackets and honed this skill to the point where I can identify a flying bug from a dozen feet away. Bees gather pollen on their hairy legs, affectionately called “pollen pants.” They each have a duty: cleaning, nursing, gathering, building. And each that works is a female, a small but stable reminder that God uses femininity. I learned about the cooperation—that the 30,000 individuals within a single hive function as a single body.
The lives of bees are increasingly important as research surfaces about pesticides and GMOs and climate change and population growth. Most of us think that we cradle the lives of bees, having the power to squish them under our sneakers or set out some sugar-water. The truth is that the bees cradle us. They hold power over the practical needs of the world and the beauty of it, too. They cross-pollinate the apple trees and they make the black berry bushes bear fruit three-times bigger. They make the Shasta daisies bloom bigger and wider. And inside their wooden homes, they paint a world of richness if only we should care to learn and look.
When I look inside my hive, I see a golden world of yellows, ambers, browns, and oranges. I see the hard work the bees do in their short lives—42 days to be exact. I see pollen stored from blooms five miles away, baby bees chewing their way out of honeycomb to take their first steps, and I watch as they all begin to recognize my face. And I see the kingdom of God.
Today at our four-year-old church, we met as a group of eleven believers. Christmastime is “supposed” to be a time of high attendance, but I’ve begun to wonder if that only works in the Bible belt, or in churches that have been well-established, or if it’s all a sham. My husband and I have worked as diligently as we’ve been able, with the faith that God has granted us, but our church is still small, and most days it doesn’t feel like it’s a growing plant. It feels like a dying one.
The bees keep themselves inside their hive whenever it’s below 50 degrees. In Cleveland that means from October to May. But there was an unseasonably warm day last winter. I walked to the back of the yard, wondering if they’d survived the recent negative-zero cold snap. I expected to see a pile of dead bodies at the entrance of their wooden home. And there it was—a mass grave of little pollinators. But slowly and surely, a couple flew out of the hive’s entrance. And then a few more. And even still—more. The hive was alive. Though the outside looked bleak, the inside teemed with life. There were plenty of casualties along the way, but the body remained intact.
The bees remind me that Heaven still meets earth, that the Kingdom of God is still here. It is a privilege and honor for those who are allowed a peek behind the curtain, seeing the church thriving and growing and bringing more into herself. But we don’t all see it, and we certainly don’t see it all. So, I’ll hope for my church and the thousands that are like her. I’ll remind myself of the honeybees, and I’ll rest in the security that God’s kingdom is always growing, both in spite of and because of us in a million ways unseen.
