Go to the Ant

Captain's Log: Table Time ~ Monday, September 8th, 2025 ~ Lauds

⁶ Go to the ant, O sluggard;    consider her ways, and be wise.⁷ Without having any chief,    officer, or ruler,⁸ she prepares her bread in summer    and gathers her food in harvest.

We discussed the exhortation to settle with an accuser quickly. This brought to mind for us a theme we’ve been seeing lately, that of being quick to deal with your sin, quick to confess. One of the children mentioned David. We all found his story very instructive. His fall, his slow repentance, his fall again (the census), his quick repentance. I did not expect it to stick with the children in the way that it has. I exhorted them to deal with their sins quickly at school, and to go quickly to those they sin against for reconciliation. 

Then we wondered about the ant. It is such a ripe image for the imagination of children. ‘Can we become wise by looking at an ant?’ Giggles and wondering. ‘Have you ever seen an ant bringing its food back to its home? Back and forth, back and forth, without stopping until the job is done! Very impressive, isn’t it?’ Ants don’t look very impressive, do they? They’re not very large, not very important to anything we do. And yet the Lord says we can learn wisdom… from them. 

This is a good reminder to be attentive to God’s world in general for lessons in wisdom, in order, in practical matters of life. I wonder what we can learn from the birds… providence, perhaps? I often tell Lewis, “Water off a duck's back, son.” My father used to tell me this as a lesson for not letting disappointments or insults get me down. They ought to roll off us like water rolls off a duck’s back. We were only speaking of this on Sunday while walking by the lake and watching the ducks this past Sunday. 

I exhorted them to be good ants today, we recited verses 10-11 together, and off we went.