Ants

"Mom, come quick!"  I never know quite what to expect when I hear those words.  This time, Victoria was calling to me from the backyard, where she had taken her dog, Jackson, out to play.  "Look at all these ants," she said.  Well, I've seen plenty of ants over the years, so I wasn't too excited about seeing more.   But I dutifully walked outside.  And she was right; this time, the ants were definitely worth seeing.

I didn't know that ants could swarm.  There, on our backyard basketball court, thousands of tiny black ants were stacked nearly an inch deep in a pile that stretched for more than a foot in diameter.  I don't know why they were there.  Perhaps we had disturbed their underground habitat the day before, when we emptied the water from Levi's swimming pool.  Maybe all ants swarm periodically, as bees do, to split an ant colony into two or more new colonies.  Whatever the reason, I knew that I didn't want that many ants in my backyard.  It was a perfect time to eradicate the ants!

I hurried back into the kitchen, filled two of my biggest kettles with water, and put them on the stove to heat.  Then, after the water reached a full rolling boil, I carried the kettles outside, one at a time, and poured the steaming water over the ants.  Later that day, when the water had all evaporated, I swept the remains of the ants into the nearest flower bed.  Mission accomplished.

So, I've been thinking a lot about ants lately.  What would it be like to become an ant, to live with the ants in that swarm?  What a humiliating experience it would be!  Just think of having to live underground in a dark, endless tunnel, working hard every waking minute, with the constant danger of being stepped on whenever you set foot out into the sunlight.  Or even worse, just imagine the threat of catastrophic death by poisoning or by a totally unexpected, boiling hot tsunami.  Even if I loved those ants (which I don't), I wouldn't want to be an ant for any reason.

Yet, Jesus did something similar for each of us.  The difference between Him and us is countless times greater than the difference between me and those ants, yet Jesus selflessly, humbly became a person, a human being, just because He loved us.  I don't care much about a few thousand dead ants, yet our gracious God cares about each one of us, and even knows each of us by name.  I couldn't begin to tell two ants apart, no matter how hard I try, but God knows each of us well, and loves us anyway.  When I saw all those ants in distress, I mercilessly wiped them out.  When God saw His people in distress because of their sin, He sent Jesus to become like us, to take away our sin, and to take our punishment, too.  And He did all of that just because He loves us and wants us to be with Him forever.  Amazing!

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