Anne LeGare

Proverbs 6:6-8 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.

God loves ants. He mentions them in His Word in several places as wise creatures. He even asks us to observe them and learn from them. For the life of me, I never knew why God loved ants until recently.

The Texas state insect is the Monarch Butterfly! Can you believe that? I’m here to tell you fire ants got short-shrift for the insect title.

When we first moved to Texas, we were baptized by fire ants! When our three toddlers played in the backyard, one would inevitably start screaming and hopping around after stepping in an ant hill.  I’ve pinched little ants to death trying to get them to remove their pincers from baby flesh. The telltale two-pincer mark on chubby baby toes – soon to be followed by a pustule – never made me very fond of the critters.

In fact, I became a professional ant hit-woman. I learned that AMDRO is the best weapon, and I’ve sprinkled it gleefully and judiciously around many anthills.

So, whod’ve thunk I would come to love ants? What’s more, the three kids love ants too. Okay, we don’t love fire ants, but Harvester Ants are cool!

What changed us is we’ve gotten to know about 45 of them over the past year.  The kids received a Discovery Kids Ant Gel Habitat for Christmas. It came with space-age gel in a see-through Lucite container. Who knew you could buy a test tube of Harvester Ants for $5 and have them shipped to your home?

All we had to do was make four starter tunnels with a poker, and dump in our ants. That was the beginning of ant-love for us. The kit came with a little round spyglass-type magnifier we could put right up next to an ant and watch it work. We could look at his little painted-on eyes, his hairy legs, and his pincers in amazement. We were smitten. It was better than TV or a video game to watch our new pets make a home for themselves.

Within 4-5 days, those ants had tunneled an entire colony through the gel. (They not only tunneled into the stuff, but they ate it too). They were tireless, and seemed to have a system of who labored and who slept. When one of them died, they would carefully disassemble him and move him to the pile they were accumulating on the top layer.

We’ve had two of these habitats, and observed the same thing happen both times. Initially, the ants were really motivated to create their home and work hard to get everything done. But after about 10 days, they’d start to run down. They would mostly sleep in little clusters of friends, rarely building or moving around the system anymore. It was like they knew there was no more to do and nowhere else to explore. They lost heart.

It would make us so sad. We wanted to tell them they were wonderful creatures and that we loved and admired them. But they had no idea that we were out there watching, (except for being jiggled and jostled) and they certainly couldn’t understand our pep-talks.

We only found one way to encourage them. When they were all down in their tunnels, we’d take the top off the habitat, and blow into it like a big wind from God’s nostrils. That would wake them up! It was pandemonium as they would all run to the top to see where the fresh air came from. Then when they realized nothing new was happening, they’d go back to their depressed state.

Both times this happened within the ant worlds we provided, we decided we had to let our pets go. We loved them so much we couldn’t be puppet masters anymore; taking away their freedom to live in the real world. We sprinkled them into our yard and watched them take their first tentative steps to freedom, soon to abandon the habitat altogether. What a great feeling to give them a new chance at life!

Go to the ant! Consider its ways and be wise.

God loves ants.  But He loves us more! He watches over us so tenderly and provides for us so abundantly.  He has counted the very hairs on our heads, and lavished His love on us. He gave us His Son, the crown of creation, to save us from our hopeless state. He even made  His Holy Spirit available to us for the fresh breath of life daily.

But we complain about our habitat. We blame God for the mess we’ve made of our freedom. And we get depressed and give up hope. God regards our trials with great compassion. We need to look up, reach up, acknowledge His ways, and love Him back.