This Labor Day, as we honor labor and recognize the contributions of workers by taking the day off, it’s to our benefit to recognize Solomon’s humble object lesson of hard work: the ant. Whether you’re busy as a bee, eager as a beaver, or poor as a church mouse … could an ant ameliorate us? (Look it up if you need to, it’s not as gruesome as it sounds.) If you’ve ever read Proverbs, you know what I’m getting at, but you may be surprised to learn that ants and people aren’t so very different. Seriously, according to science, ants too love junk food! Ants in the vicinity of Broadway and West Street in New York City probably put down over 2,000 pounds of food waste a year. That’s like 60,000 hotdogs! Maybe they’re so hungry because they’re so hardworking. So how can we better apply ant-like effort to our lives? Check out what Proverbs has to say, and then I’ll give you three areas of life we can better labor like ants for the Lord.
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest (Prov 6:6-8).
Laziness isn’t a fruit of the Spirit or the mark of a Christian. Elsewhere, it’s actually contrasted with righteousness (Prov 15:19)! So learn to labor more like an ant for the Lord in these three areas.
Your Vocation: You have to hand it to the Puritans when it comes to work. There was no sacred/secular distinction for them; they understood it all to be sacred. I like Cotton Mather’s emphasis when he said, “A Christian should be able to give a good account, not only what is his occupation, but also what he is in his occupation” (Worldly Saints, 26). The butcher, the baker, and candlestick maker, even the tinker, tailor, soldier, and sailor can all serve God to the same degree as a pastor, deacon, or church secretary. We can serve the Lord Jesus in any calling He calls us to. Our mindset should not be just to work a job, but to work our job like a Christian. How about one more Puritan quote to seal the deal? William Perkins said that folks can serve God “in any kind of calling, though it be but to sweep the house or keep sheep” (Worldly Saints, 25).
Your Education: Enrich your mind and develop your gifts. Howard Hendricks points out that spiritual growth shouldn’t be compartmentalized, but integrated into every other part of life. This is the realization needed to “keep your fizz from going flat” (Teaching to Change Lives, 25). Paul seems to have the same idea in mind in 1 Cor. 10:31. Glorify God in every area of your life, and you work hard to grow in every area. If Christ could grow (Luke 2:52), so should we.
Your Devotion: Ants are wise; they work hard in good times so they can make it through hard times. They need nourishment and so do we, in every area of life (remember, we’re not compartmentalizing). How can you invest more effort into your obedience, Bible reading, prayer life, witnessing, and church ministries? When you look at a swarming throng of ants, it doesn’t exactly look like there’s much order or organization present. However, there’s more going on than meets the eye — there’s structure, instinct, and pheromones. There’s more going on with believers, as well. We have an organizational structure in the organism of the church with Christ as our head (Col 1:18). As a new man with the Holy Spirit indwelling, we should have new instincts as we’re “renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him” (Col 3:10). (You can try and come up with your own analogy for the pheromones.)
The point is all our labor should be a labor of love for the Lord. If ants have a good reason for all their exertion, we have a better reason for it. After all, as Ogden Nash points out, it is true that ants may be industrious, but “Would you be calm and placid / If you were full of formic acid?” (“The Ant” in Selected Poetry, 282).1
Brent Niedergall is youth pastor at Catawba Springs Christian Church in Apex, North Carolina. He holds an MDiv from Shepherds Theological Seminary and is pursuing a DMin from Maranatha Baptist Seminary.
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- Note: The title, “An Offering of Ants”, is a nod to Robert Farrar Capon’s book An Offering of Uncles and should be taken more as a possessive genitive than a genitive of content, because that would just be crazy.
