The Testimony of the Ants

“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise” Proverbs 6:6   

            Storms have punctuated our survival camp weekend. Though we have yet to feel the force of a hurricane, yesterday it rained a real beating on our band of campers, and this morning we awoke under a steady drizzle. In the afternoon, the slanting rays of the afternoon sun illuminate the woods for a few precious hours of reprieve, while storm clouds again brew on the horizon. I am resting in the shade next to the trail during a field exercise, waiting for the last group of students to arrive, when I notice a line of large red leaf-cutter ants moving rapidly over the spongy forest floor, green sails blazing.

            The ants themselves define a highway I would have never seen, running along crisscrossed sticks and strips of bark, and crossing a deep rivulet on a span of two fallen leaves that overlap and curl into an almost-perfect tunnel. How do they know where to go? How do they find the road without a guide? They travel at high speeds, despite packing loads as large as themselves. They march with three times the leg as we do, and their ranks roll onward without a lag. In their mouths they hold their green banners waving at full mast. 

            I think God’s people should be more like the ants. Though we live in a world where the road to true happiness, peace, joy, and fulfillment seems virtually unmarked, how often might the path become evident to onlookers if we would all work together and move forward in harmony, even when under load? Of course, the road is well marked for those ants, although the chemical signals they follow are invisible to onlookers. The same is true of our road. God has given plenty of waymarks so that none need err from the path, but spiritual things are spiritually discerned. What a difference it would make for the world to see the otherwise invisible road clearly marked by the continual action of harmonious and helpful travelers!

            Of course, the road is not an easy one. There are obstacles that must seem impossible, and the burdens are often larger than we are. Like the ants, however, we can have an unproportionate strength, supernatural power to run the road with large burdens as if they were light, for Christ has promised, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:30). We can have even more than three-times the leg for the road when the Spirit of God comes upon us (Jer 12:5, 1 Kings 18:45-46).

            Also, like these harvester ants, we live in a lull between storms, amidst the gathering shadows of the ultimate nocturnal tempest that will soon devastate our world, and we must work together like good soldiers, work while it is day, no matter the odds. The opposition is coming, and will far exceed the natural, matter-of-course impediments.  

            Andean, the director’s little boy, begins to beat the advancing ants with a stick while chanting “and there was a great slaughter, a great slaughter!” But the ants are undeterred by the undertaker. Although there is some confusion in their ranks, and some abandon the path now strewn with the carcasses of their comrades, the remnant marches on. They have a harvest to take home! Like the ants, if we continue in the way we face a dreadful pounding. But let us remember that the giants we face are really only little boys with sticks when we think in terms of our omnipotent, conquering King. Raise the banner high! May our mouths be full of faith and hope, and may our legs move that message and make it come alive! There is a mission to fulfill. Soldiers, whether ants or Christians, must be missionaries.