Buzzy BEES and other 'b's of our garden today

 After yesterday morning's heavy fog, today there is beautiful blue sky, and warm autumn sunshine....one of my favourite times of the year...as its not too hot, not yet too cold and the plants are all still blooming...and that means the bees are buzzing!

Bees are just amazing creatures. And since there seemed to be an abundance of them in the garden this morning, not only did I take the opportunity to pull out the camera, but I was also prompted to brush up on as well as increase my 'bee' knowledge...and so I thought I'd share some of what I learnt online and saw in the garden today...

*There are about 20,000 species of bees in the world - these pictures are of the honey bee

Cosmos flowers are blooming in our garden currently...and the bees are enjoying them

• Bees are found on every continent except Antarctica

• Bees have hairy eyes...and they have 5 eyes...3 simple eyes and 2 more compound eyes with hexagonal facets

• Only female bees can sting

• Honey bees fly at a speed of about 25km per hour and can beat their wings 200 times a second

On a ball of onion flowers

• An average worker bee lives for only about 5-6 weeks and makes about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, but in that time will fly the equivalent of 1.5 times the circumference of the earth.

• Bees actually have 4 wings

Emerging from a Sweet Potato flower with wings sparkling in the morning sunlight

• *Their brain is only the size of a grain of sugar or a poppy seed but they can be trained to detect illness in humans, find land mines in Croatia, build perfect efficient hexagons in their hives to store the honey, have 170 odorant receptors and have a sense of smell 50 times stronger than a dog, and can communicate between themselves via a special 'waggle dance' to tell other bees where to find the best food sources

Enjoying a lavender flower

• Honey bees are the only insect that make a food consumed by humans

• 90% of plants need bees for pollination

• Honey bees are not born knowing how to make honey, they are taught by the other bees

• It's said a bee will collect nectar from 50 to 100 flowers on a flight from the hive, but that might depend on how the flowers are distributed or their size...while I was watching ones on flowers like the one below, I would put the number of flowers visited on one flight as much higher!

• Honey and propolis are two of the few places to find the anti-oxidant and anti-imflammatory flavonoid called Pinocembrin

• Beeswax is found in many product we use everyday from furniture polish to lipbalm

• Bees have two stomachs, one for eating and one for storing nectar

And nectar gathering can mean going down deep tunnels of the flowers on our 'Winter Showers' creeper that is just now coming into spectacular bloom

• Bees have long straw-like tongues called a proboscis, which they use to suck up the nectar from flowers, and they make honey by regurgitating digested nectar into honeycomb cells and then fanning it with their wings

You can just see the pollen starting to collect on this bee that is enjoying a flower on our choko vine, and you can also see the proboscis clearly as she sucks up the nectar

And here is another bee even hanging upside down to collect pollen - which you can see is a considerably bigger load size building up on this bee

• A worker bee can carry a load of nectar or pollen equal to 80% of her own body weight. 

• For every kilogram of honey produced, a hive must collect 10 kilograms of pollen

• Beehive 'fences' are used in Africa to keep elephants out of villages or fields

And while I was busy watching bees, of course I spotted other bugs, birds and butterflies...all reminders of God's incredible creation, his attention to thoroughness and exact detail, his creative beauty, his awesome power...and care for all these little creatures...and thus we can trust His care for us too.

Bee information sourced from these websites:

https://www.beepods.com/101-fun-bee-facts-about-bees-and-beekeeping/

https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/fascinating-facts/bees

https://www.natgeokids.com/au/discover/animals/insects/honey-bees/

https://beemission.com/blogs/news/22-amazing-facts-about-bees

Forgotten Honour - Spurgeon and the Easter Story

One of the most well-known names from more recent church history is Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892).

He has been described as the Prince of Preachers. Not only is there extensive record of his powerful sermons over 40 years of preaching at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, and so we have much accessibility to his prolific preaching, but there is another reason why I think we should take note of Spurgeon's sermons.

His preaching and writing is saturated with looking at Scripture and life with strong realisation of the realities of honour and shame.

That might surprise you…as it did me a few years back.

Honour and Shame are not new ideas to be wary of.

In our current era of history, we can feel that the 'honour and shame' perspective is something new, novel and maybe even to be viewed suspiciously. Some suppose that this way of looking at life and the gospel could be a diversion or even departure from the 'traditions passed down' in the church through history. Some see it as possibly useful in missions, and maybe even in counselling, but to bring it into every area of Christian discipleship and Biblical exegesis is going too far and bordering on the heretical.

I know many who read this blog have travelled with us for years, and are enthusiastic about a renewed awareness of the dynamics of honour and shame, but still many are not too sure if we are making too much of something and at risk of over-emphasis and even heresy.

Yet, (as mentioned before), to not be daily living and breathing and navigating the dynamics of honour and shame, would have seemed strange and neglectful to those theologians of past centuries. It seems only we in the last century or so have forgotten its importance and priority.

Honour and Shame are 'normal', but yet even can be missed in the Easter Story

Spurgeon on the other hand has much to teach us about the 'normalness' of factoring in the dynamics of honour and shame to every page of scripture. For Spurgeon they were not concepts that were strange or or only part of 'other cultures'.

I could take you to multiple examples, but as we are about to once again ponder and celebrate the events of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, I thought I would highlight just one rarely spoken of part of the events leading to the Cross, and how Spurgeon walks into such a verse of Scripture without hesitation that there are, first and foremost, honour and shame factors to be observed, pondered and applied.

Here is what he says in his 'Morning and Evening' devotional for the morning of April 5th

"On him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus."

Luke 23:26

We see in Simon's carrying the cross a picture of the work of the Church throughout all generations; she is the cross-bearer after Jesus. Mark then, Christian, Jesus does not suffer so as to exclude your suffering. He bears a cross, not that you may escape it, but that you may endure it. Christ exempts you from sin, but not from sorrow. Remember that, and expect to suffer.

But let us comfort ourselves with this thought, that in our case, as in Simon's, it is not our cross, but Christ's cross which we carry. When you are molested for your piety; when your religion brings the trial of cruel mockings upon you, then remember it is not your cross, it is Christ's cross; and how delightful is it to carry the cross of our Lord Jesus!

You carry the cross after him. You have blessed company; your path is marked with the footprints of your Lord. The mark of his blood-red shoulder is upon that heavy burden. 'Tis his cross, and he goes before you as a shepherd goes before his sheep. Take up your cross daily, and follow him.

Do not forget, also, that you bear this cross in partnership. It is the opinion of some that Simon only carried one end of the cross, and not the whole of it. That is very possible; Christ may have carried the heavier part, against the transverse beam, and Simon may have borne the lighter end. Certainly it is so with you; you do but carry the light end of the cross, Christ bore the heavier end.

And remember, though Simon had to bear the cross for a very little while, it gave him lasting honour. Even so the cross we carry is only for a little while at most, and then we shall receive the crown, the glory. Surely we should love the cross, and, instead of shrinking from it, count it very dear, when it works out for us "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

(last paragraph emphasis mine)

What a refreshing, and encouraging lesson!

But the reality of the whole lesson, the impact of it, the counsel of it, the comfort of it, the motivation for perseverance of it, the glory of God in it….is lost to us without viewing from the awareness that we are meant to 'see' the dynamics of honour and shame in it and apply it to our own lives in terms of honour and shame.

We begin to rediscover the depth of meaning and blessing in the words of Scripture, when we rediscover the awareness and alertness to honour and shame dynamics that for Spurgeon and many others of his time and before him, took as a 'given'. 

Honour and shame are not just the dynamics of some cultures in the world, or the culture of bible times, but are the dynamics of life….its just that the church seems to have forgotten about them and become blind to them …and thus separated from their truth and blessing, and guidance toward seeking and finding true glory.

As we progress through the days of 'Easter' this year, let us ask the Lord to teach us afresh of the richness and 'weight' of the glory/honour that comes from Him and to Him, all that He may be exalted and lifted up.