When I was preparing to start this blog one of the first websites I went to for inspiration was Pinterest. I wanted to find color inspiration and just get an overall feel for what I wanted this who blog page to look like. What I didn’t expect to find was inspiration for an actual post.
While I was scrolling through the endless supply of color options and aesthetic inspiration I stumbled across the picture you see of the small bee and red ballon. Now I’ll be honest my very first reaction to this drawing was, “Oh my gosh how adorable!”. But then I really looked at it, and realized that this seemingly cute drawing was also quite sad. I believe it to be common knowledge that bees can fly, hence the two little wings on their backs. So why would a bee need a small ballon to help it?
I think that there are a lot of times within our lives that we have our own little red balloons tied to us. Where we feel like we are purposeless and need something, anything, to help ‘keep us up’. A big part of a honey bees life is their wings, they are an essential tool to the maintenance and health of the hive and the honey. The wings help the little bee carry out its God given purpose, God created the bee to have its wings and He does not make mistakes.
Now here’s the kicker sometimes God gives us something in our life that has a purpose for our own, well, purpose. It is something that will help us carry out the perfect plan He designed just for us. Our own grape vine in the vastness of His vineyard. (John 15) But just because God has given you ice skates doesn’t mean that when you put them on you will instantly be an olympic ice skater. It takes time, it takes passion, learning, and sometimes waiting. God gives you the tools, but are you going to get up and learn how to use them.
Even bees don’t know how to fly right away, no instead you know what they do? They (the adult/matured bees) bring all of the younger ones out at the entrance of the hive and fly closely around to the show the younger bees how to fly. And the small bees observe and eventually try it out for themselves, and in that alone I see a lot of learning and trust. Isn’t it crazy to think that some insects have it together just a little bit better than ourselves.
A bee, who has wings, doesn’t expect to fly right away but waits patiently and watches, learns and then tries it. Whereas we see the opportunity and just go for it without any practice or learning. And because of that we fall straight to the ground and we don’t get the result that we wanted, which leads to discouragement, which eventually leads us to tying that little red ballon around our waist to help us “fly”.
There is beauty in waiting, because in the waiting God is preparing us for a beautiful season that we can only go through once we allow Him to perfectly tune and prepare us for. When God gives us a tool it is an amazing beautiful thing, because it means He trust us to learn how to use it and master it so that we may hopefully add to His everlasting kingdom.