On warm summer afternoons, I’ll at times work from my home office—the patio in our back yard. There’s a quiet of a different sort out there. At my church study, I’m not normally bothered by much sound at all, frankly. The phone rings from time to time. If someone comes in the building, I hear the front door open. And usually I have some soft, soothing piano music playing in the background.
The patio quiet is never disrupted by the phone, and dozens of birds provide the background music. Even as I write, I detect at least six different birdsongs. Other than that, the occasional car whizzes by, harmonizing with the hum of neighborhood air conditioning units.
Busy, Busy, Busy
In the relative stillness of my backyard, an abundance of activity bustles all around me. Mom and dad wren flit in and out of the birdhouse gathering foodstuffs for their recent offspring. A brilliant scarlet cardinal and his more muted spouse make their way back and forth to the birdfeeder. They, along with several other winged cousins do their best to empty the feeders every couple days.
The large maple just off the patio serves as a leafy apartment complex for a handful of squirrel nests. The residents, too, know where the birdfeeders hang, which have become a favorite hangout for the bushy tailed rodents. If they’re not scratching through the grass under the feeders looking for discarded seeds, they’re vying for position for the best pile of seeds or trying to scare off a would-be competitor from their turf. Every once in a while, angry chatter of warring squirrels breaks the otherwise pleasant music of birdsong.
Oh, and the rabbits. Usually they meander through the yard hunting for a tasty leaf or two. Sometimes, though, I’m treated to a humorous dance of chasing and leaping and stare-downs and nuzzling. Then back to the garden salad.
The other evening, we were enjoying the cooler temps, sitting on the patio and reading well past sunset. The rope lights bathe the space in a warm glow, yielding just enough light to read by, but not so much it wrecks the ambiance. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. A small black spider inched his way across the floor. Then I noticed he was on a collision course with a slightly smaller ant and was about to get t-boned.
“This should be interesting,” I mused.
As the distance between them shrank, their pace slowed until they almost collided. Then, as if they’d watched an accident avoidance video, each properly steered away—the spider veered left; the ant, right. Collision avoided. And off they went on their respective missions.
Ants Aplenty
Surely the most numerous and busiest backyard creatures—of those I can see, anyway—have to be the ants. Have you ever seen an ant that wasn’t moving? By no means do we have an infestation, but enough of these insects traverse the patio floor that they can’t be missed. Of course, from time to time one crawls on my sandal undetected until his light footsteps tickle my toes!
Where are they going, scurrying so? What are they after? Do they have some sense of direction, of guidance or purpose?
From what I’m told, if you were an ant, your job would depend on your rank. Her majesty the queen lays eggs. Females do most of the work: feeding the babies, taking out the trash, foraging for food, and guarding the nest. The guys have one job. Mate with the queen. I’m guessing I just provided ample fodder for a bunch of jokes in some people’s minds with that information.
So apparently, at any given time a bunch of lady ants are scrounging around my patio looking for something to eat and to feed the munchkins back in the nest. I suppose the guys mooch off of what the ladies bring back as well. Should be ashamed of themselves. They really ought to get a real job.
Here’s the thing about all of this activity of the birds and squirrels and rabbits and spiders and ants. It’s all going on as if I’m not even there. I observe it all, think about their behavior, and delight in their fighting and frolicking and foraging. But I’m irrelevant to them; they’re oblivious to my presence just a few feet away.
We’re Mere Ants??
All of that serves as a background to an entry I came across in my daily reading of Flowers from a Puritan’s Garden by Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon’s comments are stimulated by the writing of the Puritan Thomas Manton who, on this particular day’s reading, wrote:
The world is a great theatre and the spectators are God and the angels. I confess we think little of it; there is a foolish levity in our minds. As to us, the world is like a hill of ants; you stand by, and they run up and down, and do not think of your being there; so the Lord stands by and observes all our motions, and we run up and down like busy ants, and do not think of God’s presence among us. We live in a great clatter of hurry and business, and have but few thoughts of God. The psalmist gives a description of carnal men in these words (Psalm 86:14), they “have not set thee before them.”
“We live in a great clatter of hurry and business…”
By the way, Thomas Manton was born 400 years ago, and he described the world of his day as people living “in a great clatter of hurry and business.” And Spurgeon lived in the latter half of the 19th century. Wonder what those guys would think of the busyness of our world?!
Anyway, allow me to share Spurgeon’s take on Manton’s observation.
Lord, let me not be a mere ant on the world’s hill; but as thou hast given me an understanding, help me to use it upon thyself, so that I may rise to the true level of an intelligent and immortal being. How can I disregard my God, my Father, my all? How can I be take up with these trifles whilst thou art so near me, asking my love, and proving thy right to it by daily loading me with benefits?
What mere insect I am! Why am I thus? Why should I live like an [ant] when thou hast made me a little lower than an angel? I shall never rise to what I ought to be unless thou reveal thyself in me and to me by thy good Spirit. Deliver me from that foolish levity of which thy servant [Manton] speaks, which makes me fill my mind with contemptible vanities, and let me seriously remember thee, and the day when I shall stand before thy judgment seat.
Flowers from a Puritan’s Garden, pp. 138-139
I’m all too aware of my own propensity to make my way through each day, flitting from one thing to another—good things, though they may be—giving little thought to the observing eye of the Almighty. My days can quickly degenerate into “a great clatter of hurry and business,” where a bunch of stuff gets done. But to what end?
To battle against my inclination to neglect God’s ever-present watchfulness, I begin my daily morning prayer time the same way, borrowing from the prayer of yet another Puritan writer.
“O Father,” I pray, “what a death it is to strive and labor, to be always in a hurry, and yet do nothing. Alas! Time flies, and I am of so little use. Would that I were a flame of fire in your service, always burning forth in one continuous blaze! Fit me, Lord, for singular usefulness in this world.”
I’m not so arrogant as to suggest that from then on, I consistently and constantly walk through my day, stoking the flame of my labor with the awareness of the Father’s presence. But it does help set the tone, and I often find myself remembering my morning prayer.
Hopefully during the summer months, you’re spending plenty of time outdoors surrounding yourself with the sights and sounds of God’s little creatures. Every once in a while, put yourself in the ant’s place and look up!
Amen