One morning I wasted nearly an hour watching a tiny ant carry a huge
feather across my back terrace. Several times it was confronted by
obstacles in its path and after a momentary pause it would make the
necessary detour. At one point the ant had to negotiate a crack in the
concrete about 10mm wide. After brief contemplation the ant laid the
feather over the crack, walked across it and picked up the feather on
the other side then continued on its way.
I was fascinated by the
ingenuity of this ant, one of God’s smallest creatures. It served to
reinforce the miracle of creation. Here was a minute insect, lacking in
size yet equipped with a brain to reason, explore, discover and
overcome. But this ant, like the two-legged co-residents of this planet,
also shares human failings. After some time the ant finally reached
its destination – a flower bed at the end of the terrace and a small
hole that was the entrance to its underground home. And it was here that
the ant finally met its match. How could that large feather possibly
fit down that small hole? Of course it couldn’t. So the ant, after all
this trouble and exercising great ingenuity, overcoming problems all
along the way, just abandoned the feather and went home.
The ant
had not thought the problem through before it began its epic journey and
in the end the feather was nothing more than a burden. Isn’t life like
that! We worry about our family, we worry about money or the lack of it,
we worry about work, about where we live, about all sorts of things.
These are all burdens – the things we pick up along life’s path and lug
them around the obstacles and over the crevasses that life will bring,
only to find that at the destination they are useless and we can’t take
them with us.
Author Unknown
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