Bees In My Fountain

A few years ago I gave up trying to grow a lawn. The combination of my front yard’s alkali ridden soil and my total lack of gardening expertise hastened the decision.

My grandfather had what is known as a green thumb. He could grow roses on a brick. I on the other hand, have a bIack thumb. If killing plants was murder I would be the most prolific serial killer in the world. So I took out all of the grass and replaced it with river rocks and a nice fountain. Now, instead of trying to water and mow every week, I pull weeds three or four times a year.

I really like the fountain. When I wake up in the morning I can hear it gurgling outside my bedroom window. When I come home at night I am greeted with the same sound and it soothes me. I even set it up so it fills itself every day and turns itself on and off. My kind of garden!

The downside of the fountain is that it gets some weird kind of buildup and I have to remove it or the pump will clog and quit working. The other problem is bees. For some reason, bees love the fountain. They gather around it and get pretty worked up if I approach. I don’t like getting stung, so I try to stay away from the fountain when the bees are around.

The other night I dismantled the fountain to clean it up and remove the crud buildup. About fifteen minutes into the job I started hearing buzzing in my ear. Then it got louder and more insistent. When I finally realized what was going on it was too late, I was surrounded by a swarm of bees, and they were not happy!

What they failed to realize in their tiny little bee brains is that I was trying to help them. If I let the crud keep building up, the fountain would quit working. If the fountain stops, the water that the bees crave would dry up, and they would have to look elsewhere for their water.

As I squirted them with the hose and tried to get them off me, I realized that the bees just didn’t understand what I was doing. They thought I was just messing them up, but I was really trying to make their life better.

I talk to people all the time who think That God just wants to mess up their lives and take away their fun. What they don’t realize is that the truth is exactly the opposite. Every guideline that God set out in the Bible is there to make our lives better, not worse. Jesus said, “A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” (John 10:10, The Message) That sure doesn’t sound like someone out to ruin your life, does it?

What we have to remember is that God has a vested interest in our lives. He sent his son, Jesus, to die in our place. If I sacrificed one of my boys to save your life You can believe that I would do everything I could to make your life as good as possible. It is the same with God. He wants your life to be great, he has a lot invested in you.

So any of the “rules” the Bible sets out are not meant to hamper your life or make it less than you think it should be. Instead they are meant to make you a better person, a better parent, a better neighbor. How can you lose?

Still dodging the bees… Jerry