Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
Elias and Ayden, my grandsons, ages 12 and 11, painted the new beehive this week. We are beginning a beekeeping enterprise together. The hive had to be painted this week because a bee brood has been ordered, and one day, I’m told, by the young man who has a year of beekeeping under his belt and who is walking us through this process, the phone will ring and a voice will say, “The broods are in. Can you pick up your brood today?” We need to have the boxes painted before this happens so that strong smell won’t bother the new habitation of bees.
Because the weather was cool on the Monday we planned to do our painting, we moved the hive down to the laundry room, bought outside latex white paint with a low VOX count, layered newspaper on the floor, donned Papa’s old painting T-shirts over our heads, gave each boy a brush and a small plastic tub of paint. They did a good job with minimal damage and took a break until the hives were dry enough to be ready for a second coat.
Some time was taken watching the “Starting Bee-Keeping” DVD I had ordered, but most of the time they just hung around outside watching the bees in my friend’s box, which he had moved to our yard while the weather was still cold and the bees were numb in their hibernation. Their talk was about bees (and nothing but bees). After lunch they asked, “Can we go out and watch the bees?” Their mothers reported they talked enthusiastically of bees upon returning home that evening.
I can’t tell you how happy this made me. I can remember the first time my father opened the hive he had purchased secondhand and moved to his retirement farm in Waterman, Illinois. He lifted a frame from the upmost super and the world of bees opened up to me; they crawled everywhere, flew about our heads and something sacred, rarified and wondrous awoke in my soul.
I’m sure this amazement with the bees in my backyard will moderate with the first bee stings, but for right now, it is most gratifying that my two grandsons love what I love.
How often do I wonder through the world and not love the things that God loves? I am innately neglectful, filled with my own little visions, occupied with the forceful habit of my lists, and taken by the ennui that forces me to look down instead of looking around.
Instead I would like to be like Celia in Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!”
I want God to know that I love His bee scheme, His star scheme, His flowing rivers to the ocean scheme, His burgeoning growing plants scheme, His human soul-to-soul scheme, His all-things-created-beautiful scheme. I want to love what He loves.
“O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!” Perhaps we are learning this, the bees, the boys and me. Out of all whooping.
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