Wisdom of Ants

Weeks ago, I was on my way to buy a rolex: a Ugandan delicacy — not the watch, when I remembered a petite tin (a.k.a piggy bank) in which I store my change. As I opened the tin to pay the vendor, I noticed that I had many coins to afford extra things.

That’s when God said ‘That’s the wisdom of ants.’

I asked Him what He meant. Here’s what I learned:

The coins you see, are a collection of change and balance I received over a period of weeks. I empty the tin only when it’s full. But in comparison to the item I wanted to purchase, the collected-over-time change could afford three times it.

If you have taken keen notice, ants rarely come at fresh piles of food. They wait and convey on their backs left overs, especially if they have not been wiped clean off any type of floor. They get into the dishes and utensils’ grime having at what they can: crumbs and all. Then they carry away, to secret lairs and store up for the winter.

Of course where I have grown up from we have no winter. But this could be representative of the seven years of famine, like in Joseph’s story from the Bible.

In our day-to-day lives, we have friends who say “If God could only give me over a hundred million; or a billion, I’d save a chunk from it!”

That is not how ants think! They remain consistent with the little they collect. But that little accumulates overtime; pretty much like for my piggy bank. Pretty much like a faucet that releases a drop of water every two seconds. The vessel beneath it may not get as full as one which has an open tap with mighty pressure and water coming out of it, but if you leave it overnight, it’d be full by the time you awake.

So what’s God trying to say?

Develop the art of saving now! Even the book of Ecclesiastes says ‘if you wait for perfect weather, you may never sow.’ If you wait to earn a specific huge figure before you can dip your toes in the rapids, you could remain broke forever.

Think of it two-way: One; you are not growing any younger. Each year closes in to your retirement if you are in your forties and fifties. Thus you must adopt. Two; your idea of abundance may be wrong. You could think that abundance is earning 10,000 dollars per month for example. But contentment and self control, have a way of making abundant even 1000 dollars per month!

I am not saying your faucet won’t bring in water at a high pressure at some point. It could rain from above and you’d harvest free water. Depending on what you do, you could get 5000 extra dollars a certain month. But life has taught me personally, that sometimes all your faucet would bring are drops — consistent drops.

Will you go borrow water all the time? Will you go steal it?

I think not. Proverbs says even a neighbor is worn out from someone who incessantly barges or borrows from them often.

Now, imagine with me again, if you have been depending on the piped system, and never had a reserve tank or jerrycans (depending on your setting). I know people who have wired their home system in such a way that the pipe water from the local water supply authority goes to the reserve tanks first before the actual house.

When the authority announces a water shortage or cut for a specific number of days, these people never feel a pinch. Why? The water will be supplied through the house as before, since they created another smaller micro water economy apart from the larger local one.

The local water supply authority could represent your job. If say salary is delayed, you’d have your reserve supplying you. If not! Jokes on you!

The beauty of adapting the wisdom of ants is that it can bail you out during unprecedented times or events. Not only that, (since some extremely well off people might have just enough to bail them out) BUT, this instills in us the discipline and grit to weather seasons of scarcity, or to understand that dry seasons could come after the wet seasons (for those in the tropics).

Notwithstanding, someone may brush off my theories and contest: “I thought the Bible says your leaves shall be green throughout the year! Since you are a tree planted by the rivers of water. (Psalm 1:3)”

If that was the case, then scriptures like Jeremiah 17:8 would not have been written.

For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the river, And will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf will be green, And will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will cease from yielding fruit.

What the heat means here I assume we all know. Some rivers dry up due to that, is drought. As was the case for the brook Cherith that Elijah camped by. But the scripture has said he will not fear the heat nor be anxious in the year of drought. Why? 1. The tree (that one who trusts in the Lord) would have found some means of preserving water within itself; or 2. The tree’s roots would have gone so deep that they encountered the fountains of the great deep which God opened up to contribute to the floods in Noah’s times.

Drought and heat could mean drying up of the river (local water supply authority cutting off) But the leaves staying green could mean ‘availability of water despite the shortage circumstance! — That, or the notion (like Paul stated in Philippians 4:12-13) that the tree would have found a way of using sparingly what is left of its reserves just as it found a way of living in abundance …

This takes us back to the point of the idea of abundance: it is a question of contentment with the little one has as opposed to the much that is out of reach.

Having understood the hardworking of the ant, the self-drive, the wisdom to harvest and the wisdom to reserve; the ants’ wisdom seems to come to a limit.

If the river dries up, the ants won’t have a source to go harvest. What would be the new solution then?

Finding a new source! A source where heat nor drought can affect. This is representative of life after retirement. The source is closed up. They won’t call you back! Many try to manipulate the system seeing they have no avenues, by extending say age limits, so that they retire after 5 more years or 10! A thing that leads to more corruption and injustice.

Ants having life spans of 1-2 years may not fully be at leagues with humans who could live for 40 or 60 or 80 or 100 years. If you only store, what you store could get affected by inflation.

Their wisdom like Moses gets you out of slavery or total dependency on your masters, but one needs a new wisdom called Joshua to lead him or her to the promised land flowing with milk and honey.

This is the stage where we apply the wisdom to create more — to create a new river to supply you, or conjure a fountain of the great deep that won’t run dry.

Not to sound so complicated, this is the stage where you invest what you saved through assets like land, treasury bonds, unit trusts, etc.

Ants as well work in groups which help with accountability or motivation, resulting from strength in numbers moving in one direction.

So I pray for you and me, for the spirit of wisdom, yes the very wisdom that was with God in the very beginning as He created from nothing, that it may dwell with us: that entity that has knowledge of witty inventions. May it help us (after all the hard-work and saving is done) find an invention to create endless supplies for us and our children and families, even while it’s yet still early.