WACKY WEDNESDAY WISDOM- Don't Mess with the Ants

 

   It was so big I just had to take a picture of it. The first picture I took that day in the grass near a parking lot was okay but after looking at it on my phone, I realized the picture didn't do it justice. By the way, when I was growing up, phones didn't take pictures. And they didn't travel with me in my pocket. Now they do things like take pictures, tell me which way to turn when I'm lost, order pizza for me, and play my favorite songs. But I digress.
     My options were limited that day when trying to determine what I could do to show how big the red ant mound was. I previously lived in Greenwood, SC for five years, which I declared then to be the Red Ant Mound capital of the world, but this was the grandest mound I could remember gazing upon. Always one to mistakenly believe that I am full of ingenuity and extreme intelligence, I brainstormed what common object I could place on top of the mound to provide context in the picture. Soon after removing my sunglasses to get a better look at the monstrosity, an "Aha!" moment occurred in my pea-sized brain. "Put the sunglasses on top of the mound," I proudly proclaimed to myself.
     Based on my time in SC, I am a self-proclaimed expert as it pertains to red ants and their dwellings. First and foremost, you don't disturb a red ant mound unless you are in desperate need of entertainment and wearing a hazmat suit. They rise to the top by the millions and emerge from the hole like lava erupting from a volcano. If there is human flesh anywhere in the surrounding zip code, they will find a way to cling to it and eventually sink their little ant teeth (or whatever it is they bite with) into the aforementioned flesh.
     Knowing all this, I carefully placed my sunglasses on top of the mound and commenced to popping snapshots. Still not satisfied, I eventually stooped and got a ground level shot that I thought would suffice. Immediately afterward, I grabbed my sunglasses and retreated to the safety of the driver's seat of my truck.
     Within seconds, my active imagination produced sensations of  teeny tiny legs crawling all over me, including on my forehead and cheek. Didn't take me long to realize my imagination wasn't misbehaving after all. How in the world these ants were able to get on my glasses and in my pants without me knowing it is beyond me. But there they were, bigger than life, and they were having me for lunch.
     I don't like red ants, or any ants for that matter. But there's a lot I can learn from them. Scientists say they have survived for millions of years because of their ability to unselfishly cooperate with each other. I know this to be true because I saw a group of them carrying a dead worm one time when I was young. It was gross but impressive. They also have a tremendous work ethic and absolutely will not give up. A bored prisoner of war once wrote that he watched an ant try 67 times to climb the wall to get to a crumb of food, falling to the floor the first 66 times before finally reaching his destination.
     Most of all, they have survived as a species because they have been willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the other ants- a team-before-self kinda thing. And by doing so, their numbers have increased exponentially over the years.
     Philippians 2:3-4 says "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others."
     We live in a world where everything is "me" first. Unfortunately that's true even in our churches at times. Perhaps we could take a thing or two from the ants about selflessness and sacrifice for the common good. I not only learned that lesson from the ants but also another important one that day- don't ever mess with an ant mound, no matter how good a picture it would make.