Humble Honeybees

“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled.

And whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Boys and girls, we’re going to chat together here.

I want to talk about the simple honeybee.

Do you know what a bee does?

It collects honey.

Okay what else does it do?

It takes honey from nectar, anything else?

It stings.

If you get in its way of collecting the honey and nectar, yes, it stings.

It also pollinates.

Every flower has nectar or honey to lure the bee.

When the bee grabs the honey, it then passes it onto the next plant

pollinating that plant from one to another.

It is really quite amazing!

Do you know how many types of bees,

how many varieties of bees there are in the world?

There are 20,000 types or varieties of bees.

They are on every continent in the world

including Antarctica.

They are in the deserts as well as in forests.

Here what is also interesting.

There are over 359,000 varieties of flowering plants

that rely on those 20,000 types of bees to pollinate them.

And 90% of those plants are pollinated by bees.

Humble honeybees are very important to our world.

Let’s do a little math right now.

The average honeybee will visit

between 100 and 1,000 plants in one single trip.

The average colony of bees is 2,500.

The average bee will make at least 10 trips a day.

How many plants can one colony pollinate in a day?

25,000,000 (Twenty-five million) plants in one day

will get pollinated by just a simple colony.

Now why do I say that?

Why is that so important today to give you a lesson on bees?

Because bees are humble little creatures

who do a whole lot of work in the background

and when was the last time you ever thanked a bee for doing its work.

I don’t know about you but I haven’t.

And they are super important.

We wouldn’t have the food on our plate

if it wasn’t for the bees doing their job

because the plants would not grow.

If the plants didn’t grow, we couldn’t pick them.

See how simple a little, humble, honeybee is to our world.

In our ecosystem, they are considered essential little creatures for us.

Now why do I bring that up today?

Because Jesus is trying to tell his disciples to be humble

and teach them to not think they know everything

because there is a lot they did not know.

He tried to remind them that

if you are the humblest of all

then people will actually appreciate you.

But if you exalt yourself,

if you fluff yourself up and make yourself to be important

people will not recognize you.

We are supposed to be humble

and that is our lesson this week and will be again next week.

The disciples are obviously not humble and

these Pharisees think they are so important

that they have taken all the places at the table

because they think they are so important.

Jesus is reminding them that

there are a lot of things we do not know.

Boys and girls, that is probably true for all of us too.

Who in your life is busy as a bee?

Your parents. You are right.

Your parents are busy little bees.

And I don’t know about you but when I was your age,

I sometimes took that for granted

and I forgot to tell them thank you for all the work that they do.

Busy as bees, running around.

Now they may not be collecting honey

but they are collecting money.

Now without money, you would not get fed either.

It is their kind of honey.

Who else do you think in your life is busy as a bee?  Teachers.

You are very right. It’s your teachers.

This has been the hardest two years of any teacher’s life;

they work super hard, boys and girls,

because they not only did what they did in your classroom,

you see them running around the classroom,

but they did extra work to do stuff online

and they went and did extra courses to figure out

how to do it. So they have been busy as bees

trying to teach you how to do things.

I bet you could think of a lot of other people in your lives

that were as busy as bees; and they were helping you.

And maybe what we can do is be grateful to them

and to remember how important they are in our lives.

Can we do that this day? This week?

Give them a big hug and tell them how important they are

and that they are just like a humble honeybee.

You can give them a hug.

My dear parents and adults,

the honeybee gives us a good example

of how to be in the world, no pun intended,

it just does its work;

it pollinates up to 1,000 plants in one single trip

and we often are not grateful to this simple creature.

Both my parents are dead but I know when I was a child,

I took an awful lot for granted.

I know in those latter years, I realized that

and spent as much time as I could with my parents

in gratitude for what they did.

Maybe you as adults, your older parents are still alive

and it is never too late to go back and be grateful

to the honeybees in our own life, who have done so much.

There are probably other people in your life

who have done a whole ton to keep your life fulfilled.

It is important for us to be humble enough

to know those people;

we do not live in the situations in our lives alone;

none of us are alone in this world even if we are living alone,

we rely on so many other people for our world to go around

and to make it all work; from the stores

and all the people who produce

and put all those food stuffs on the shelf.

I want to just talk about that for one moment.

Think about the beginning of the pandemic,

they were considered essential workers.

It was the first time in their entire life

that they were given the proper dignity that they deserved.

When we think about it, we know,

we could not get our food without them

putting it on the shelves in the stores.

The grocery clerk became an important component

in allowing us to get our food.

And the risks they took;

they were the first ones to take the highest risk

in delivering the food to us.

And allowing us to buy the food.

Remember that chaotic two years and how hard it was;

and how terrifying it was to go down to the store?

Now just go back one step further.

Who do you think brought those products to the store?

Not just put them on the shelves.

How about all the truck drivers who we largely ignore

and complain about the large trucks driving up and down our streets.

How do you think the food is going to get to our stores?

These truckers also work so hard.

Then go back one step further.

Think about all the people who collected the food on the farms.

They were not miraculously put into a truck by somebody.

They were human beings who collected the food,

those farm workers

who we often disparage because they are immigrants

and who are some of the hardest working people in our society.

They work long days in the sun and they get paid minimal wage.

Some, yes some are here illegally

because they cannot get the visas to come and do the work.

But we rely on hundreds of thousands of them

like the honeybees to do the work in our fields.

Then think about those who plant the food;

they are the same group of farm workers who do that.

There is a lot to be grateful for;

there is a lot to be humbled for by our society.

And yes, I know, we are the ones with the money in our pockets

and we start the chain but let’s be humble about that.

There are a lot of people,

who do a lot of work to bring all that to our tables.

Today, we ought to be grateful for all those workers

and we ought to be grateful to our parents;

we ought to be grateful to our teachers.

All these people we now consider essential workers;

they are important and today we want to recognize them.

If we get a chance to say thank you to one

and if we know one, then please do that.

And if we don’t, then at the very least can we say thank you in our hearts

and our prayers for all the work that they do.

Whoever we meet this day, can we be grateful for

the many humble honey bees in our lives

and indeed but grateful for all God does for us each day.

May we be humble enough to be grateful to many around us.

“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled.

And whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”