Are You Smarter Than a Bumblebee?

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. Psalms 136:1 ESV

You wouldn't think it would be much of a contest, would you?

No one likes bumblebees more than I do. Seriously. It's my not-so-secret fantasy to have a hamster-sized bumblebee as a pet, but that doesn't mean that I have any expectation that I could teach it to sit on command.


As I was sitting at my desk one day late last summer, I heard a "plink" on the window and looked up to see that a bumblebee had bumped into the glass. This seemed to be a particularly obtuse bumblebee; poor little guy bumped into the glass three more times before he finally flew off the the opposite direction. I watched him until he was out of sight, congratulating myself for being smarter than a bumblebee...you wouldn't catch me pounding my head into the glass like that!

It occurred to me later that day that, in my own way, I'm not really all that much smarter than a bumblebee. I may be too smart to walk into a closed window, but that doesn't mean that I don't cling to my pet sins, committing them over and over.

Yes, God's love endures forever, as the Psalmist points out 26 times, but God's love is a tough love; He's not in the business of protecting us from the consequences of our own actions. So as I blunder about, taking the knocks of my own making and oblivious to the lessons I should be learning, am I really any smarter than a bumblebee? Are you?