Tonight, we looked at the fascinating subject of bees in our Little Big Church service and discovered that bees have a lot to teach us about the kingdom of God.
There are different kinds of bees (queen bee, worker bees, drone bees) and each bee has a different role to play. The queen bee has a longer life expectancy than the other bees and is responsible for laying eggs and maintaining the overall health of the hive. She is the only bee in the colony that can lay fertilised eggs which will develop into worker bees or new queen bees. The worker bees, on the other hand, are responsible for hive maintenance, pollination, and honey production. The drone bees have no reproductive role and are only present to mate with the queen.
In the same way, we are all individually important to God and all have different roles to play. We belong to a community, just as bees work together in a hive, and in the church, diversity and variety are important: unity is not uniformity! Paul likens the church to a body, where each part has a different function, but every part is necessary (1 Cor 12, Romans 12). We should never feel useless or unimportant, but should seek to find out what pleases the Lord and what our particular role in the church should be.
Just as bees work together to serve the queen bee, we need to remember that we must work together to serve the King of Kings. Greatness in the kingdom of God comes as we serve God, and we serve God as we serve other people (see Matt 25:31-46, Matt 26:25-28). The church may seem to be a poor reflection of God at times, but the church is God’s idea and He wants us to let His light shine through us so that others may come to know Him. (Matt 5:14-16)
