Emotional pain is like that too. You build it up in your head so that the mere
hint that it might be coming makes you frightened. It isn’t the pain, however, that makes us
freeze or run away. It is the fear. If we would be still and calm, we might
escape the pain altogether. We certainly
build up the idea of pain in our heads, to the point that the fear is most
assuredly worse than the pain itself.
Philippians 4:6 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
That got me thinking that there are other lessons I can
learn from the bee. Though fearsome,
bees are very useful creatures. The
pollen they spread produces growth. Pain
too produces growth. Like
pollen, the growth from pain isn’t automatic.
You have to do something with it—process it, see what you can learn from
it. If it just sits there as you are
praying for it to end, pain will not produce any growth.
Romans
5:3-4 also
glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance,
character; and character, hope.
Bees also produce honey.
Pain can produce a sweet joy in life in feeling the real presence of God
in your life and his comfort. Bees
return laden with nectar in sacs—to the point that they waddle around with the
burden. “The worker bee
returning to the hive with a load of nectar is almost immediately greeted by
other workers ready to relieve her of the load”
(“How do Bees Make Honey?”). We
too are social creatures who should immediately come to our fellow workers aid,
and with the load lightened, the work of turning pain into sweet honey can
begin.
Galatians 6: 2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will
fulfill the law of Christ.
“Nectar
returned to the hive at this point is barely recognizable as honey,” being
mostly water (“How do Bees Make Honey?”). The bee must add the enzymes from their own
bodies, allowing the water to be evaporated, leaving behind the honey. We too must add to the pain—we can add more
pain, or we can add from our own deep sense of who God is, as revealed by the
word and by our experience of His love, and the Holy Spirit that lives in a
believer’s heart. Adding His love to pain produces the sweet victory that allows
up to rise up out of our circumstances into the loving presence of God.
Psalm
119:103 How sweet
are your words to my taste, sweeter
than honey to my mouth!
All this takes time. We must trust God that he knows what he is
doing. If you are heavy laden with the
pain that you have begged God to free you from, trust that he must still want
you to learn from it. Unload some of it
on your fellow workers and go to the work of turning the pain to honey.