REFLECTIONS

Moving Parts

They don’t seem as plentiful today as they were when I was a boy. Back then, there were so many around I often and unknowingly found myself standing in the middle of one until a sharp sting on my ankle told me I had disrupted a community of moving parts busy at work.

Red ant beds represent one of the busiest places in the world. From above we see a tiny bullseye in a circle of worn desert teeming with unstructured busyness. Only if you watch long enough, you see that there is structure. Every ant has a job to do, and they go about their duty with total dedication. No time wasted and no shortage of effort to go forth in search of a payload often larger than the bearer of it.

Hidden inside that tiny bullseye, beneath all the bustle above, is the cause for it all. Through a labyrinth of narrow tunnels, the workers deliver their payload to its place. All in service to the community, but especially to honor the queen. And so life goes, a bed of moving parts in endless pursuit of something they are born to do.

Everyone seems in pursuit of something in our busy world. The affluent bask in luxury but never enough to exceed their neighbors’. Children run about their playgrounds seeking victories in the games they play but learning most from the hard knocks received when they don’t. Neighborhoods, bonded by ethnicity, beliefs, or status—social or economic—rush about in busy pursuit of something they believe will better their lives. Beneath bridges here and there finds gatherings of those with no place else to go, all in search of means simply to survive another day. But no group seems to find lasting satisfaction or contentment. Those with money, never have money enough, those seeking power or pleasure never have any that lasts, and the means to survive today offers no assurance that tomorrow’s needs are met.

Red ant beds with all those moving parts are one of nature’s fascinating animations, going in all directions all day long. But at dusk, those moving parts gather around to savor the cause that brought them to live as one. And in the end, isn’t that what we are all looking for?

Our world is an ant bed of moving parts and each of us is one of them. I believe most of us live in search of the place to belong, and among other moving parts, to play the role we do best in service to our community and the world; but especially to honor God. Might that place be the body of Christ? We are a part of it, you know. And Apostle Paul explained the role:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. (Colossians 3:23-24)

You are the light of the world,

Richard +

www.reflectingthesavior.org

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