“Nothing preaches better than the ant and she says nothing.” (Japanese Proverb [1])
I remember years ago seeing advertisements for ant farms on the back of comic books and in catalogs. I never got one, but I have seen ants in nature. The above proverb is true that you can learn a lot by watching the ant. Here is what Solomon said about the ant:
“You lazy fool, look at an ant. Watch it closely; let it teach you a thing or two. Nobody has to tell it what to do. All summer it stores up food; at harvest it stockpiles provisions. So how long are you going to laze around doing nothing? How long before you get out of bed? A nap here, a nap there, a day off here, a day off there, sit back, take it easy-do you know what comes next? Just this: You can look forward to a dirt-poor life, poverty your permanent houseguest!” (Proverbs 6:6-11, The Message) [2]
It seems like ants are always busy. I guess they do have to rest in their colonies from time to time, but the rest of their days are spent working. Some might think they are workaholics. Come to think of it, what games could they play? Tag? King of the hill? People can either be like the ant or like the lazy person Solomon was instructing. Neither of these are good in the extreme.
So what do we need to learn from these?
We need to prioritize what needs to be done in our lives. I can’t imagine what they did back in Bible times. It seems like there would not have been much to do during down time, but today we have radio, television and computers. We need to prioritize what the important things are in our lives. These may differ between people, but one thing that is needed is a clean place to live. If you have actually read through the laws that God gave to Moses, you will find what many of them had to do with daily living. We need to keep our homes in order for our safety and our health. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit so we need to give time to take care of them also. That means finding time for exercise — unless your work has you running around enough to take care of that!
After you prioritize what you need to do, you need to make a plan for when to do the other things. I, myself, like to do the things I need to do but don’t necessarily like to do, before I do what I want to do. This may not be possible for all people, but you just need to find out what schedule works best for you. Sometimes you can combine some of the things you need to do with what you want to do, like watching your favorite television program while exercising. I have an exercise bike in the garage. I listen to books on tape or the radio while riding my bike. That makes the time spent exercising a little more enjoyable and makes the time pass quicker.
We read in the Scripture above, the ants prepare for the future by bringing in food all during the good weather so that they will have plenty during the winter. We need to prepare for the future also. This includes not procrastinating. If we keep putting off housecleaning, one day we will look around and see what a big job it would be to clean the place up. We would then think we would never clean the place up. If we start, we would just make a dent in it, so why even start cleaning up? The same thing goes with exercising. If we go too long without exercising, we might go big guns and burn ourselves out right at first and not try it again. Or we might think that there is no way we could get into shape, so we don’t even try to do anything.
Ants don’t let anything deter them from what they have to do. If someone steps on their anthill, they don’t sit around crying, “Oh no! What are we going to do? Our home is ruined! We’ll never be able to get it fixed.” No, they get started and get to rebuilding their hill.
I’m not saying that rest is not needed. God told us that we are to rest and have an enjoyable time, but we are not to take this to excess. Some peple may live too much like the ant and need to take more time off from work to enjoy life. So learn from the ant. Do what you need to do.
By Dean W. Masters
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