The Bee was Angry!

Some of you already know two things about me.

First, although I'm a pastor by calling, I am still a farm-boy at heart. I love living on the farm and one my favorite things to do, if I have just a few minutes to spare, is to cruise through farm implement lots looking at all the tractors, combines, and implements I wish that I could buy and/or drive.

Second, when I was like 5 or 6 years old, I had a pretty traumatic encounter with a bumble bee...and my Dad was right there when it happened. Somehow we had inadvertently disturbed a nest and a big bumble bee flew straight into my right ear and started buzzing and stinging incessantly. Dad eventually got the bee out and I ran hysterically to the house. But to this day, about once or twice a year I have a night-mare about the incident and my wife has to wake me up and calm me down. The sound of that buzzing, even more so than the actual sting, is firmly implanted in my brain.

Yesterday my life-long interest and my childhood horror met. On my way home from church I not only stopped by a farm implement lot (Anderson Tractor Supply), but I actually took the time to get out of the car and walk the lot. It was wonderful! I sat on all kinds of old and new tractors and found one that was similar to the one I drove for my Uncle for hours during my high school years.

When I got off of the tractor I heard a little strangely familiar noise and then, all of a sudden, on my right shoulder I saw a bumble bee securely attached and trying to burrow in. Others were flying around. Apparently there was a nest under the cab of the tractor!

Adrenaline kicked in and, in an instant, I frantically tried to hit the bee with my left hand while almost hysterically (okay...hysterically!) moving my right shoulder, hoping it wouldn't get through the shirt.

You can almost picture it, can't you? Unlike Mohammed Ali, I was not "floating like a butterfly."

Thankfully the bumble bee was on probably the thickest part of the shirt possible and so I was able to knock him off before actually getting stung. But for a moment all those old memories flooded back.

To boot, I almost pulled a muscle in my frantic response! So much for being "fit under the collar!"

If there's a take-home point in any of this it might be that, even though we might be self-sufficient in many different ways, we are all vulnerable in one way or another. To think that we are otherwise is only an illusion.

Part of faith is just trusting that we have someone to run to, to turn to in our times of distress. Someone who has felt first-hand the stings of this life and, according to Scripture, has taken away the sting of death.