The Life of the Hive by A. P.

Yesterday I was looking through the bee hives to assess their needs. It always amazes me how the hive works together continuously for the good of the whole.

While the queen does not direct or make decisions for the hive in any way, she brings stability, calm, and order to the hive.

The first hive I opened it was evident immediately that they were queenless.

Flighty, restless, a different sound to the whole hive, no eggs, no larva, no new growth.

The next hive had decided that they were over crowded and needed to swarm, possibly to take stress off of the resources, reduce overcrowding and so on.

The third hive was totally packed with bees, honey and brood wall to wall top to bottom!!

Yet, they had not swarmed, which is amazing to me!

We were able to make a new hive from that super full one which is always a fun thing to do. We also had some queen cells in the hive that swarmed that we moved over to the queenless hive for them to raise a new queen.

Even in nature some receive and others don't, some grow while others struggle, some are healthy, others not so much.

It is amazing and perplexing.

The other day we had a swarm. The bees landed in a tree too high for us to reach even with the tractor bucket so we were forced to just watch and wait.

Eventually, the swarm took off, we chased after it far into the woods.

We were hoping they would land again so we could gather them into a new colony.

They kept going too far and too fast.

The strange thing was they left nearly half of their cluster in the tree!! To my knowledge they are still there, clumped on a branch, no home, no queen, no vision, no purpose.

A head scratcher for sure!!

Usually, when they swarm they all move together, communicating with the scouts about where to go for a new home.

The Precious Fruit of the Earth by Amber

For the past several weeks, I’ve had a scene return repeatedly to my mind.

It’s one that continues to stir me, inspire me, and simultaneously break my heart.

It’s that of an orange tree, gloriously laden full of fruit, nearly ripe, beautiful.

And yet, scattered around it on the ground are the fruits that fell away before it was ready.

I have this urgent cry in me, crying out that we stay on the tree until we are ripe.

This image was brought about from a conversation I had a couple weeks ago, fellowshipping about getting ready and what that meant.

It was shared that God’s timing is perfect, that He is looking for the precious “tree ripened” fruit of the earth, and He won’t harvest us until we are ripe, perfect, or in other words, mature.

Wow, I thought.

Of course that makes sense.

Tree ripened is by far the best, why would He settle for anything less, when we know the difference as well?

The next word shared was such a powerful, simple revelation:

To be tree ripened, we must stay on the tree.

I think in myself I have wondered before how we would get there; how would we manage to get all the way to that finishing line, ready, ripe?

And yet the answer is obvious:

STAY CONNECTED TO THE TREE OF LIFE, for life.

A fruit doesn’t grow itself. It doesn’t know the nutrients it needs. It just stays connected, and receives.

I was spurred by these topics to look up the process of fruit and how it forms.

A fruit tree sets on many blossoms and, once they are pollinated, they move on to the next stage in which fruit begins to set on.

During this stage of formation and development, the tree is delivering a rich cocktail of nutrients to progress the growth.

A fruit that stops receiving the nutrients halts and falls away.

The ones that survive this falling away and continue growing. Now they enter the next and final stages, which involves increased color, sweetening, and softening of the insides.

Only then, remaining on the tree for the fullness of time, is a fruit tree ripened.

This also spoke to me:

“Patience, and let patience have her perfect work, that we may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing.”

Our faith may be tried, but yet let us remain on the tree until we receive that sweetness of the final stage.

We are all different fruits, but we are to be connected to the same tree.

When pestilence comes, the immune system delivers a response to fight it, because it’s not just a random branch.

That’s OUR branch, OUR hand, OUR foot. That’s who will fight for us when we need lifted up.

I see this clearer than before. Not to just hope an affected member gets better soon, and not to think it wouldn’t also affect me.

Because that’s my body too and infection can spread fast. Nothing is benign.

I also learned about grafting. How wild that is!

I had heard about it before, but it speaks new things to me.

Grafting is done because it is insured to produce the exact fruit you desire quicker and hardier than its seed counterpart.

Which, because its genetic makeup shares similarities to a human in terms of two genetic parents, is a gamble.

Sure, its DNA is the same in the course that indeed it will be AN apple.

But the genetic mixup means it will be a lottery in terms of which variety, known or unknown, might come through.

Starting from seed is further complicated by the fact that the tree may be enormous and the fruits small, bitter, or inedible altogether.

Because of this, grafting is almost exclusively done for the continuity of an orchard.

To graft, one selects a strong rootstock, often specialized for disease defense, desired flavor, and quality of fruit.

A compatible scion is picked next. This will be the top of the tree and variety of fruit grown.

A fresh cut is made in each, and they are banded and joined together. This provokes a healing response to grow around their injuries, creating a strong union bond that will remain for the rest of the tree’s life.

This grafting process can be done many times.

It can even be done with different fruits so long as they belong to the same family. There even exists a “Tree of 40 fruits”, with all kinds of stone fruit varieties.

It spoke to me how the body of Christ is like this, and whosoever will yield themselves will be grafted in, one body and one tree, in Christ.

The Heart of Love by Amber

 Love and heart have captured my attention lately.

It started several days ago when I heard that perfect love casts out fear.

This got me curious about love, so I started looking into it. The verses that struck me were found in John, and they stated “whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in Him”.

And: “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us”.

I found it very interesting that it’s by loving that love is perfected.

I think in my mind perfect love always came with fireworks and possibly a package deal of perfection all around, but it’s starting to look like it must be practiced to be perfected.

This led me to a new question: what does our heart have to do with love anyway? Why does love create a feeling in our heart?

It didn’t make much sense if I thought about it, but I knew there must be something to the fact that a heart shape is used as a symbol of love around the world.

So this was the next thing I began searching for, and a very interesting article turned up.

Entitled “Emotions And The Heart”, in the article, scientists explained that they used to think that love was just a mental state.

But they now know that love and other emotions originate in the heart, and that our heart sends way more information to our brain than our brain ever does to our heart.

Emotions like anger, frustration, anxiety and insecurity stress the body and drain our energy, causing our heart to beat erratically, constricting blood vessels, raising blood pressure, and weakening our immune system.

People that frequently experience these feelings, or spirits, are at much greater risk for heart diseases and attacks.

Conversely, experiencing love, appreciation, care and compassion produce a very different heart rhythm.

Your heart pattern smooths out, like gently rolling hills. Your blood vessels open and your body begins to work harmoniously.

This produces the warm feeling around your heart, a signal that it feels good and is working as it should.

It literally makes you healthier.

All this was very profound to me, the physical manifestation of the spirit realm.

I had just been wondering this:

Why was it that love was so hard for people to grasp; why, when we come from the very foundation of love, can it be so difficult to receive or even comprehend?

I realized this is because Adam and Eve sold our soul to the devil all those years ago.

When Christ died he broke that curse and made the way, but our soul still lives under that curse.

Our heart is God’s, and even our heart has dominion over our brain.

Our spirit is stronger than our soul.

And yet we have the choice whether or not to allow our soulish, normal, every day feelings dominate us.

It is mind boggling that where you are at in your spirit or feelings can affect you so physically.

You would never suspect something like an emotion to have such physical substance, but it really does. This must be why giving up can lead to a stilled heartbeat so quickly.

It is at once heartbreaking and profound.

How to Be Somebody

 

Do you feel like a loser?

Do you feel like you’re never quite good enough, and you’re always surrounded by people who can show you up?

Let me share a secret with you. 

You don’t need a college degree or a certain amount of money to make it in life. You don’t even need a big fancy house.

The fourth chapter of Luke tells about how Jesus was called to Jairus’ house to heal Jairus’ sick daughter. On the way there, Jesus was thronged with people, young and old. The high priests could have well been there, who were considered the leaders in Jerusalem.

Some centurions, the high ranking guards in the Roman empire, could have even been around Jesus around the time.

Jesus didn’t pay attention to any of them. Even though they were right there, brushing by him, even well respected and perhaps people of prominence,

Jesus didn’t see them. Until, suddenly, everything stopped.

“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.

His disciples stared at him. “Master, the multitudes throng You and press You, and You suddenly want to know who touched you?”

“Somebody,” Jesus said. “Somebody has touched Me.”

It didn’t matter how much money one of them had in their bank account or how many men were under their command.

It didn’t matter how good they were at basketball or football or how skilled they were.

It didn’t matter how high some of those ranked on their SAT tests or how many PhD’s they had.

It didn’t even matter what car they drove or what kind of career path they held or what generation their phone was.

It didn’t matter how attractive they were or their spouse was, or even how good their personal hygiene was.

None of those were qualifications to becoming ‘somebody’ to Jesus.

What was it?

How did one person in those multitudes of people become a standout?

One woman, in a desperate, broken, hopeless place, ripped off by the medical industry, reaching the end of her rope, in one moment, chose to do something completely remarkable.

She chose to believe and act on her belief.

And Heaven shook on her behalf.

Her belief stopped everything. Jesus had to respond. He had to.

This woman’s choice to believe catapulted this loser, this reject into becoming a VIP in the kingdom of God.

Personally, when someone tells someone, “you’re a winner!”, I almost reflexively tense up.

That’s because I hate the idea that we grade people as winners or losers based on physical attributes, accomplishments, or abilities.

It feels like we judge how deserving people are of love.

I remember somebody talking to me about a certain restaurant: “You know, only losers work there.”

“Why would you say that?” I asked them. “Why would you judge those people just because of how they look or where they work?”

I know what it feels like to be a loser.

I hate it when other people categorize people as ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ because I’ve spent too much time in the other camp.

But when I heard it the other day, God touched my heart, and said: “No, listen, there are real winners and losers in life.”

In Christ, you are a winner. When you listen and follow God’s will, you line yourself up for God’s blessings.

How did God say it in Deuteronomy 30?

“I set before you a blessing and a curse”.

If you obey God, it commands a blessing. If you choose to turn from God? It commands a curse.

Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.

Call on the name of the Lord, dare to believe in how much God loves you, boldly approach the throne room, and become a “somebody” in the eternal kingdom of God!