Pastor W. Puckey

“My child, eat honey, for it is good, and the honeycomb is sweet to the taste. In the same way, wisdom is sweet to your soul. If you find it, you will have a bright future, and your hopes will not be cut short.”
—Proverbs 24:13-14

     I have been reading about the honeybee, one of God’s most amazing and industrious workers.
     “All worker bees are female. One of their many jobs is to gather food from flowers. Thanks to their long tongue, honeybees can soak up nectar that is inside a flower. They store nectar in a sac called a honey stomach. They must visit about 100 flowers to fill their honey stomach. Honeybees also gather pollen. A honeybee uses her jaws to grasp the stamens of the flower, then shakes the stamens, covering herself in pollen.
     After leaving a flower, a honeybee cleans herself with the brushes on her hind feet. She moves the pollen into pollen baskets, which are hollows on her rear legs. Once her pollen baskets are full or her honey stomach is filled with nectar, the honeybee goes back to her hive.
     Once a honeybee nears the hive, guard bees greet her. These are worker bees that protect the hive and make sure that the honeybee belongs to their colony. The way is finally clear, and the honeybee enters. Inside the dark hive, thousands of honeybees make buzzing sounds with their wings. The honeybee gatherer touches one of them and offers a bit of nectar that she has regurgitated (spit up) from her honey stomach. After many nectar exchanges, the honeybee begins to dance. This dance shows the other bees the way to the flowers she has found.
     The bees form a circle around the gatherer. They touch her with their antennae to feel which way she moves. The gatherer wags her abdomen while moving a few steps in a straight line to show the direction of the flowers. The faster she wags, the closer the flowers are to the hive. Once the other honeybees get this message, they fly away to collect more pollen and nectar.
     The worker bees that have stayed behind in the hive exchange nectar mouth-to-mouth. Each honeybee transforms a little of the nectar from her honey stomach into a food, called honey. The inside of the hive has thousands of small wax cells that make up the honeycomb. Each worker bee will deposit some honey into one of these cells. Pollen, an important source of protein for honeybees, is stored in separate wax cells to be used later for food.
     The honey is still too thin to be stored. The excess water needs to evaporate. Sitting above the honeycomb, worker bees fan their wings to create a current of air. It’s hard work, but efficient. Soon the hive cools off and the honey thickens. Fanning changes the temperature

of the hive by a quarter of a degree. A honeybee can measure the temperature with the tips of her antennae.” (Excerpt from “The Bee, Friend of the Flowers” by Paul Starosta, 2005 Charlesbridge Publishing).
     I share this information with you to stimulate your thinking. I have one question after reading this, “Who taught a stupid little bee how to do all this stuff?!”
     Our friends who deny the creation story have little defense for such intricate details in the design of the bee. From the pollen gathering, to the “guard bees” who protect the hive, to the regurgitated nectar which will become the honey, to the elaborate dance which tells the other worker bees where to get nectar and pollen, to the way they store that nectar and then cool it with their wings until it becomes the honey that we love, this whole process is, in the words of Josh McDowell, “Evidence that demands a verdict!”
     It is interesting to me when I talk to those who say they can’t believe in God because they see no evidence of His existence. I think it’s a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. They can’t see any evidence of His existence. I can’t see anything else.
     There is intelligent design in every area of creation if one will only be bold enough and honest enough to examine the evidence. And if the design is intelligent, it necessitates a Designer who is also intelligent, One who is far above human intellect. One who is capable to not only imagine these amazing creations, but to bring them into existence and to establish the means by which they reproduce and are perpetuated through the centuries, that future generations might also see and believe.
     There are some in the science community who have rejected the power of God in creation. They are looking for “proof” of God’s existence, while the evidence of God’s existence is screaming to be heard all around them. For those who lay aside their presuppositions and receive the revelation of God by faith, they find His wisdom to be “sweet” as honey to the soul.
     The evidence of God is undeniable to those who are honest with the factual information. But if you still struggle, why not come out to church this Sunday morning and discover what the “buzz” is all about!

Pastor Bill