Yesterday, I was once again enjoying the busyness of the bumble bees at the lavender in the backyard. I was pondering the myth that bumble bees and honey bees shouldn’t be able to fly and wondered where that came from.
I did some research, and according to one source, “The origins of the honey bee flight myth are hazy, but the most enduring version involves an aerodynamics engineer casually calculating that a bee’s weight-to-wing-area ratio made flight impossible. Though some accounts attribute the claim to scientists like Ludwig Prandtl or Jakob Ackeret, it likely stems from a misunderstood 1934 observation by the French zoologist Antoine Magnan, who applied fixed-wing flight equations to insect wings and concluded — incorrectly — that insect flight defied aerodynamic theory”.
Of course, both bumble bees and honey bees can fly, as we well know. Apparently, nobody told God that they couldn’t fly and certainly no one told the bees.
That took me down the rabbit hole of thinking about how we come up with reasons we can’t do things that God asks of us.
I thought of Moses standing beside the burning bush. He had plenty of excuses.
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Exodus 3:10
Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am about to come to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ And they will say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” Exodus 3:13
Then Moses said to Yahweh, “Please, Lord, I have never been a man of words, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your slave; for I am one with a hard mouth and a hard tongue.” And Yahweh said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, Yahweh? So now, go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth and will instruct you what you shall speak.” But he said, “Please, Lord, send now the message by whomever You will.” Exodus 4:10-13
Let’s make that more current, no burning bush. “Kevin, I want you to invite your neighbor to church”, saith the LORD.
“Who me? You must be mistaken. I wouldn’t even know what to say.”
“Yes, you! Did I stutter?”
“You must be mistaken. Send someone else to ask them. Someone who has the gift of inviting.”
Now, it might not be inviting that the Lord has called us to do, but all of us have something the Lord has told us to do that we fight Him on with excuses, pass the buck to others, or just plain pretend not to hear.
The Lord knows our shortcomings as well as He knows that bees are perfectly capable of flight. If we have a shortcoming, He will provide what we need.
For consider your calling, brothers, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may abolish the things that are, so that no flesh may boast before God. 1 Corinthians 1:26-29
As someone once said (and I can’t find an accurate attribution), “God doesn’t call the equipped; He equips the called.”
Obedience when we know it’s our gifting is easy. When we’re not certain, or worse yet, convinced we can’t do what God asks, it’s even harder. Still, if God has called us to it, it’s for a reason.
It’s time we traded our excuses for obedience. God knows what He is doing, even when we think He’s wrong. Maybe I’ll just go talk to that neighbor today.
Hallelu Yah (Praise God)
Be blessed
Kevin
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