We Are His Bees

bee blessed, originally uploaded by Az~Kate.

(This is a presentation I gave years ago at a Women's fellowship. I was cleaning out a drawer today and happened upon it and thought I'd post it here. Kind of odd to read it now, and recall the circumstances then versus now. Now I have no Church affiliation what so ever, but I find myself engaged in the 'ministry', perhaps more significantly than ever...)

Do you ever feel that you are overwhelmed with one chore after another, one need after another, one call after another from the Lord to serve… your husband, your children, your parents and family, your job, your neighbors and friends, your church needs….etc. etc.

Do you feel like you are lost in a sea of demands and needs that sometimes seem impossible to meet? Do you ever think…“What about ‘me’ what about my needs?”

Once during a time when I was praying for direction about whether or not God wanted me to become involved with helping in Women’s ministry I came across a newsletter with an interview between 2 very busy Christian women. I felt God helped me see His perspective better through some things they shared.

In this newsletter, there was quoted a portion of a diary of a woman named Lilias Trotter (1853-1928), in her day she was a renown artist, a devoted Christian, and a missionary to the Muslim people in Algeria for 40 years (particularly ministering to women). Her life inspired the hymn ‘Turn your Eyes upon Jesus’

One woman shared this… “in your book about Lilias you share a passage from one of her diaries that has been an incredible encouragement as I try to accomplish one little task after another, I am sometimes overwhelmed with the precious lives that God has entrusted to me, as well as His call for my ministry to others. I know this passage will be a blessing to other ladies as well.”

Before I read the passage here’s a definition! Miss Trotter had an excellent vocabulary!

Desultory (desultoriness) –1.Moving, jumping or passing from one thing or subject to another, without order or natural connection; unconnected; immethodical. 2. Coming suddenly; started at the moment; not proceeding from natural order or connection with what precedes; (this is my life! one thing interrupting another!) Haphazard, random, aimless, lacking method or application.

Now here is the quote From Lilias’ diary…

"A bee comforted me very much this morning concerning the desultoriness that troubles me in our work. There seems so infinitely much to be done that nothing gets done thoroughly. We seem only to touch souls & leave them. And that was what the bee was doing, figuratively speaking. He was hovering among some blackberry sprays, just touching the flowers here & there in a very tentative way, yet all unconsciously, life- life-life-- was left behind at every touch, as the miracle-working pollen grains were transferred to the place where they could set the unseen spring working. We have only to see to it that we are surcharged, like the bees, with potential life. It is God and His eternity that will do the work-- Yet He needs His wandering, desultory bees!"

Maybe you sometimes feel like I do, that there is simply too much to do all the time… how do we ‘fit in’ women’s ministry events and meetings too? I believe coming to women’s events is one way to be sure that we are ‘surcharged’ with life, Gods life inside us...so that the seemingly random tasks of our daily life, will impart God’s intended life-touch to others.

At women’s meetings we’ll hear the Word which itself is alive with God’s power, we may hear testimonies that will increase our faith and our own commitment, we make friends and create bonds that strengthen us in our inner man. No matter what the ‘function’ even if it’s not something you’d normally be drawn to…it can be a time of drawing closer to your sisters in Christ imparting the “pollen” of truth, love, faith in God etc. with one another. I believe we need to and are meant to come together to build one another up, to hold one another up in prayer. To comfort, encourage, exhort and spur one another on to fulfill the unique call God has given each of us as His sister, His Bride, the stewardess of His children and on and on.

God is the one who created families, and God is the one who created the church, and HE plants us in the place He chooses.

If we neglect assembling together we may be contributing to the weakening of our own spiritual lives and the lives of our sisters. We’ll miss out on what God wants to bring to our body of women through YOU.

We all need friends, we need fellowship, we need one another to pray for us in our struggles, God ordained community within His church. In order to see God’s plan for the Church fulfilled it requires our responsiveness. Women’s ministry times (formal and informal) should be times of receiving and giving of God’s life, love and wisdom into one another like the desultory random transfer of pollen among the flowers. We are His bees.