Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: HARVEST (11/21/19)
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TITLE: Picnic Time | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
11/27/19 -
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My favorite past-time is harvesting cans and bottles with the neighborhood guys to help them fix up their community center. I learned the secret from the ants I work with through the day.
I was six when my Creator told me in his word to study these little creatures and I’ve been doing it ever since. I’ve studied all twenty-six different species of these harvesters but the easiest to work with has been the red. I’ve got an ant farm with thousands of these half-inch biters and that seems to be a real conversation stopper when it comes to my love life.
Take Lindy for example – the last date who I invited to a harvest festival. I set out a blanket in a wide-open field, opened a great picnic basket, and laid out some sandwiches and a few bowls of sesame seeds.
“You expecting someone else?” she asks. “You’ve got enough here to feed an army.”
“I like to come prepared,” I say. “Hey, have you ever thought about harvesting cans and bottles for kids?”
She was so bug-eyed while I was describing the finer points of binning and gleaning, she missed the guests who arrived for the harvest festival. A few of them took liberties with the dressing on her hand and she was up screaming and dancing trying to brush off the red invaders.
“Look’s like the army arrived,” I chuckled.
There was more fire in her eyes than I’ve seen in any women’s eyes - Even my momma’s when I brought that rattler home.
“Are you a horned toad or a wasp?” I asked, pointing at her feet. “Those are the enemies. The rest is food. Which are you?”
When Lindy saw thousands of little pincers all around her feet she didn’t hesitate to jump into my arms. It’s like magic.
“They’re taking the Creator’s harvest into the storehouse,” I told her.
“I just don’t want them taking me into any storehouse.”
“They’re welcoming you to the neighborhood but if you don’t carry the right smell, they’ll chew you up and dump you in the trash heap. These reds will travel up to thirty miles to find what they like and I happen to know this group is hooked on sesame seeds.”
“You mean you did this on purpose?” she said in disbelief.
“Don’t you be impressed, now,” I said. “I’ve been studying these critters for years. Those few on your foot meant no harm – they’re just the scouts leaving scent markers so others know where to find the harvest. See that? Those worker ants have got the bowls half empty already.”
I stepped away from the blanket and set Lindy down so I could crouch and observe closer. “They’re fierce protectors who can bite you with their mandibles while stinging you from their abdomen. The females do the hard work hauling the food and caring for the home base.”
“Nothing new about that,” she said. “Just don’t tell me that when you invited me to a harvest picnic that this is all you got.”
It was all I had so that date isn’t going down on you tube as a model for anyone. I figure that if believers could really be like these ‘red ants’ we’d bring in the harvest. Each ant knows where it belongs and what it is tasked to do. Individually, they’re not much, but as a colony they are a well-oiled machine prepared to work as one.
No aunt queen would ever bemoan the fact that there are too few harvesters. She would birth more in the same way our King births more to go into fields that are already white unto harvest.
Every day in the ant colony is a day of harvest and thanksgiving. They reap in the good times to prepare for the hard times. Our Creator knew what he was doing when he told us to study the little harvesters.
Now, if I could only study how to harvest a dating life.
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