They hang on for all they are worth, but for all observable evidence they have no idea why. Or do they? Each one toils amid thousands of fellow workers, each one a laborer, yet each one also an engineer of the highest caliber. The marching army has reached a place where there is no longer any path, but do they turn around? Never! Incredibly, they devise a way to cross and do it with such immediacy that it appears it was pre planned. Who knows? Maybe it was.
They’ve reached a place where they recognize there will be an air gap in the trail over some void, some opening that it would take an unacceptable amount of time and/or effort to circumvent. Without hesitation, each of them advances to successive positions in which they reach out into the open space ahead, climbing with marvelous precision over their fellow travelers to place their bodies in such an arrangement that will allow another, a fellow engineer, to proceed out into the nothingness beyond and assume a similar posture until eventually one of them reaches the other side and grabs an anchor point so there will be a biological bridge for the entire army to cross and reassume travel on their ever-increasing path.
At first, their bridge is methodically constructed at the closest point to the other side, but as the group refines its calculations and reassesses whatever level of energy and resources are required to use this crossing location, if they determine that it would be more efficient to change the location to another spot, even though the span required to cross it in the new location might be longer, they nevertheless consider the resource cost, and move the bridge accordingly. In unison they make the decision; in unison they relocate the bridge, adjusting the positions and numbers of tiny bodies required to keep the bridge intact.
In a similar vein, we’ve all seen videos of schools of fish that swim in unison, changing direction together and simultaneously in mere instants. How does each fish know when all the others are going to swap directions? It happens so quickly we humans are at a complete loss to understand what’s going on in those piscivorous little brains, but Someone knows. It’s how they’re wired, and He wired them. Ants think like that too. As capable engineers who all graduated from the same school, each and every ant in the colony knows exactly what they must do, what each of the other ants will do, and exactly when each will do it. No questions, no long, drawn out discussions or committee sessions to evaluate the costs, the timeline, the logistics required, none of that. Like the fellow says in the comedy movie, “This is America, we don’t plan, we do!”
Now imagine if you were one of those little guys, but with your human mind and human emotions. What would be going on in your head when it came your turn to grab hold of the forelegs of your friend and extend your forearms out for the next guy? You’d know that soon enough there would be an endless army of your fellow ants clambering over the length of your carcass for the next several hours, all the while treading you underfoot with tarsal claws gouging everywhere. What a demeaning situation, but you’d have no choice but to hold on lest the objectives of the entire colony be jeopardized. The whole project would be on your shoulders as much as anyone else’s, and you’d be expected to hang on with every ounce of determination you could muster. Do you think you’d be up to it? Maybe the physical part, but for humans and the way we’re wired, the emotional toll might be insurmountable. But then as human beings, we can sometimes find ourselves in situations that require different kinds of emotional sacrifices -those required for the greater good of helping our fellow travelers get where they’re going.
Fortunately for the army ant, they don’t have human personalities and therefore don’t seem to mind taking a lowly position for the good of the colony. Are you beginning to see where this is going? See, this writer thinks we could learn some things from some of our little six-legged friends, the army ants. Although we could never become capable of the required level of groupthink to build human body bridges, there are many things we can do to improve the fare of our neighbors here in this life. Recognition of the needs of others and the willingness to endure some degree of sacrifice to those ends are but some of the many honorable traits we could inculcate.
The willingness to assume a lower position in the “food chain” is another, albeit more difficult pursuit, but one that reveals our motivation to help society as a whole. It is perhaps the most difficult too. When Jesus gave the lesson about the wealthy and/or elite fellows who enjoyed sitting in the front pews or at the prominent places at the feast, He was speaking to our desire to bask in the aura of social popularity, of having everyone be envious of our positions in society – and boy do we have folks who are caught up in that personality defect! Imagine someone in today’s elite society stretched out as part of a body bridge and undergoing that sacrifice of allowing everyone, even commoners to walk across! Only in another world, in the world of creatures who have learned from millions of years of experience the value to their kind of not allowing personal ambitions to interfere with their duties to the group, does this kind of thing happen.
As an aside, another interesting facet of these little ants is that they instantly know each other even to whether or not they are from the same colony. That’s another similarity with believers because the Spirit inside us doesn’t take long to reveal Himself in other people, so by being able to recognize the Spiritual sincerity of other believers we are like those little guys in that regard.
As Christians we are called to use our time here to do whatever we must – including making whatever sacrifices necessary – to enhance the body of Christ. Sometimes that means assuming a less elegant place, maybe the back pew of the church; maybe pitching in and helping some stranger change a tire on the highway in the hot sun. We have to be willing to grab onto our place in that bridge and hang on so our brethren can succeed in getting across this void we find ourselves in here in the world, to understand we, as believers, are all headed down the same trail, and we have to know – without stopping to think about it or worry over what it might cost – what our duty is and be willing to do whatever we must to make sure we all get to the other side – like those little ants do without hesitation. It’ll be worth it, and when that blessed Day comes, we’ll be rewarded for our effort. You can count on that.
God bless all.
MK