Hello everyone,
I went down to the back of my backyard yesterday to show my little granddaughter inside my beehive. (It’s OK, the bees are very lethargic in the cold, and I have two little viewing windows that can be opened without taking off the lid of the hive and disturbing them). Just three weeks ago when we still had some warmish weather, I’d checked the hive and there was quite a lot of honey although, at the time, I did notice that the stored honey had decreased somewhat. I had decided back then that I would not harvest any honey and make sure my bees (all 20,000 of them) would have sufficient food through the winter months when there is almost no forage from which they can obtain nectar.
Well, Gracie and I looked in through an inspection window, and the bees were very slowly going about their work, but I was surprised at how much honey had disappeared! Honey is bee food – and nearly two whole frames had been consumed in the cold snap to keep the colony alive. That leaves four large frames in the super box (the extra honey storage box on top of the main brood box). That should be enough to get them through until spring with, maybe, some supplemental syrup from me to help them along.
I walked back to the house with Joel and Grace thinking, “Wow, they ploughed through a lot honey pretty fast – glad I didn’t harvest at the start of autumn, they could have all died!”. Then I felt the Lord impress on me a thought. I’ll try and put it into words – I kind of felt it and saw it rather than actually hearing it.
Human beings need food and water in order to survive and stay healthy. If the body cannot get enough food we can get sick and, in extreme circumstances starve to death.
The spiritual person needs spiritual food. Our spiritual life consumes spiritual food. If we are depleted spiritually and we don’t spiritually replenish we’ll starve … and we’ll not make it through the winter experiences of life. It’s that simple. We will not have the spiritual resources gained by a deep abiding relationship with God.
Being “spiritual” is not some attainment of a higher level of consciousness by our performance, or just some graduation to a higher plane of living. In some ways it is a higher plane of living, or, more correctly, the complete way of living as God originally designed for us. But in order to stay at spiritual peak condition (and so, ready for how God wants to use us and enjoy Him), we need the nourishment of spiritual food. The point is, we use spiritual energy. It is a consumable thing – just ask any preacher after they’ve poured out their hearts after preaching sermon! And spiritual food fuels our spiritual life as surely as physical food fuels our physical bodies. We don’t eat once, and then never eat again. We eat regularly so that our bodies stay healthy. We need regular spiritual feeding, too, in order to remain spiritually healthy – because “winter times” come to us, and we need reserves of spiritual energy to get through. So, a minimal amount of spiritual food is not wise, at all.
This is what the apostle Paul was talking about when he said,
Ephesians 5:18 “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, …” [the definite article “the” is not in the Greek text denoting power and not THE person of Holy Spirit.]
And the ancient Greek grammar here literally means, “be filled and keep on being filled with spirit” – not THE Spirit, as in THE person of Holy Spirit, which only happens once, but with Holy Spirit power. That’s food! In other words, keep feeding yourself spiritually, and care about that as much as you care about food for your body – because we use spiritual energy and always need more of it. If that were not the case, Paul would not have instructed the Ephesians like this. There are times in our faith journey when we need to draw on our spiritual reserves and dig deep to get through. I have seen spiritually emaciated Christians come completely undone in the “winter times” of life, and lose their faith altogether. Life is not just about food and drink for the body. Jesus said, John 6:55 “For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.”
In other words, as we “feed” on Jesus, to use the metaphor, we nourish our spirit which becomes capable of coming through tough and testing times when the winters or lean times come, without withering and dying, as some have done.
I’ll keep an eye on my bees and make sure they’re doing well through winter. But I’ll also keep an eye on my spiritual health and see in a new “spring” when God makes all things new again. And I’ll keep an eye on you, as well … to make sure you’re all “eating” well, too.
You are so loved. SO loved!
Ps Milton